Abandon Statistical Significance
Blakeley B. McShane, David Gal, Andrew Gelman, Christian Robert, Jennifer L. Tackett
(Submitted on 22 Sep 2017)
In science publishing and many areas of research, the status quo is a lexicographic decision rule in which any result is first required to have a p-value that surpasses the 0.05 threshold and only then is consideration--often scant--given to such factors as prior and related evidence, plausibility of mechanism, study design and data quality, real world costs and benefits, novelty of finding, and other factors that vary by research domain. There have been recent proposals to change the p-value threshold, but instead we recommend abandoning the null hypothesis significance testing paradigm entirely, leaving p-values as just one of many pieces of information with no privileged role in scientific publication and decision making. We argue that this radical approach is both practical and sensible.
Subjects: Methodology (stat.ME)
MSC classes: 97K70
Cite as: arXiv:1709.07588 [stat.ME]
(or arXiv:1709.07588v1 [stat.ME] for this version)
Submission history
From: Andrew Gelman [view email]
[v1] Fri, 22 Sep 2017 03:59:24 GMT (15kb)
FREE PDF GRATIS: arXiv
