[ExI] Statistical tests

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Wed Nov 13 10:16:48 UTC 2013


Weak statistical standards implicated in scientific irreproducibility
One-quarter of studies that meet commonly used statistical cutoff may
be false.   11 November 2013

<http://www.nature.com/news/weak-statistical-standards-implicated-in-scientific-irreproducibility-1.14131>

Quote:
Johnson then used these uniformly most powerful tests to compare P
values to Bayes factors. When he did so, he found that a P value of
0.05 or less — commonly considered evidence in support of a hypothesis
in fields such as social science, in which non-reproducibility has
become a serious issue — corresponds to Bayes factors of between 3 and
5, which are considered weak evidence to support a finding.

Indeed, as many as 17–25% of such findings are probably false, Johnson
calculates. He advocates for scientists to use more stringent P values
of 0.005 or less to support their findings, and thinks that the use of
the 0.05 standard might account for most of the problem of
non-reproducibility in science — even more than other issues, such as
biases and scientific misconduct.

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BillK




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