A concise defense of statistical significance
A letter, signed by over 800 scientists and published in Nature called for an end to using p-values to decide whether data refutes or supports a scientific hypothesis. The letter has received widespread coverage and reignited an old debate.
[…] Most of the objections to p-values or the p < 0.05 threshold in these articles can be summarized into two categories:
[…] Banning p-values or “p < 0.05” thresholds wouldn’t address these objections. We will still have to make decisions, we can’t just report a Bayes factor (or a p-value) and refuse to decide whether a drug trial should continue or not. So our decisions will still sometimes be wrong, and in both directions.
[…] The last kind of objection is more sensible–though less often the …
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