Observational astronomy has shown significant growth over the last decade and
has made important contributions to cosmology. A major paradigm shift in
cosmology was brought about by observations of Type Ia supernovae. The notion
that the universe is accelerating has led to several theoretical challenges.
Unfortunately, although high quality supernovae data-sets are being produced,
their statistical analysis leaves much to be desired. Instead of using the data
to directly test the model, several studies seem to concentrate on assuming the
model to be correct and limiting themselves to estimating model parameters and
internal errors. As shown here, the important purpose of testing a cosmological
theory is thereby vitiated.Comment: v2: Revised, comments and references added; Published version
[vailable at http://www.raa-journal.org/raa/index.php/raa/article/view/539
