In science, the success of an experiment is often determined by a measure called "statistical significance." A result is considered to be "significant" if the difference observed in the experiment between groups (of people, plants, animals and so on) would be very unlikely if no difference actually exists. The common cutoff for "very unlikely" is that you'd see a difference as big or bigger only 5 percent of the time if it wasn't really there — a cutoff that might seem, at first blush, very strict.
It sounds esoteric, but statistical significance has been used to draw a bright line between experimental success and failure. Achieving an experimental result with statistical significance often determines if a scientist's paper gets published or if further research gets funded. That makes the measure far too important in deciding research priorities, statisticians say, and so it's time to throw it in the trash.
More than 800 statisticians and scientists are calling for an end to judging studies by statistical significance in a March 20 comment published in Nature. An accompanying March 20 special issue of the American Statistician makes the manifesto crystal clear in its introduction: "'statistically significant' — don't say it and don't use it."
There is good reason to want to scrap statistical significance. But with so much research now built around the concept, it's unclear how — or with what other measures — the scientific community could replace it. The American Statistician offers a full 43 articles exploring what scientific life might look like without this measure in the mix.
Is is time for "P is less than or equal to 0.05" to be abandoned or changed ??
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday April 19 2019, @09:13PM (5 children)
Alright,
How statistically significant is this? Is it like something one might read on Quillette? Inquiring minds want to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistician [wikipedia.org]
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ [worldometers.info]
26,970/328,621,262=.0000820701613640568 or 0.00820701613641%, so,
http://worldpopulationreview.com/ [worldpopulationreview.com]
So we are looking at around 2,581,838.1 Statisticians, world wide. We add in Scientists.
From Unesco [unesco.org]:
2,581,838.1+7,800,000= 10,381,838
And 800 out of those ten million are calling for the end of the term "statistically significant".
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @10:29PM
>And 800 out of those ten million are calling for the end of the term "statistically significant".
True true, but appeal to rationality didn't work for the default choice of init on linux systems, so, it might not work for science in general too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:55PM (3 children)
You are treating this like a random sample, it isn't.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 20 2019, @07:52PM (2 children)
It is a self-selected sample of a rather large population. Kind of like a Fox News Poll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @10:55PM (1 child)
They dont treat themselves as a sample of anything... only you do because you don't get it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @10:58PM
BTW, I say that as someone who would never sign this.