‘Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?’ —Kierkegaard
Psychology journal bans P values
P values are widely used in science to test null hypotheses. For example, in a medical study looking at smoking and cancer, the null hypothesis could be that there is no link between the two. The closer to zero the P value gets, the greater the chance the null hypothesis is false; many researchers accept findings as ‘significant’ if the P value comes in at less than 0.05. But P values are slippery, and sometimes, significant P values vanish when experiments and statistical analyses are repeated. […]
“We believe that the p < .05 bar is too easy to pass and sometimes serves as an excuse for lower quality research,”
