Please stop being condescending and actually explain yourself. >No one predicts "an absence of effect" In my field, we most certainly do predict an absence of

Please stop being condescending and actually explain yourself. >No one predicts "an absence of effect" In my field, we most certainly do predict an absence of an effect, in the following sense: 1. if a manipulation does not have an effect on the system, then we expect no systematic deviations in the measurement distribution 2. point 1 will be revealed by H0 (no systematic change in measurement distribution across conditions) not being rejected. It's beginning to sound like you've encountered people who misuse or misinterpret this technique -- and I agree that there are alarmingly many such people -- but this is different from the technique being invalid.