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"Significance" is a social concept currently serving two roles: for determining what is considered publishable, and for determining what is considered true. Thi
by jimrandomh 9y ago
"Significance" is a social concept currently serving two roles: for determining what is considered publishable, and for determining what is considered true. This is meant to modify the second one, not the first. (Publishability should depend on quality of methodology, and be determined at the pre-registration phase before results are in.)
- nonbel 9y agoFirst, I agree that publishability should be independent of the results. Do you know anyone who disagrees with this though? That seems to be the standard opinion, yet the situation of filtering by p-value persists. Also, in the usual case where the null hypothesis is "no difference", no one really cares about what the p-value is telling them anyway. They care "is my theory accurate/true", when their theory predicts something other than the null hypothesis. I figure we may as well set the significance level in these cases so that everyone "wins", and go on to use analytic techniques that actually address the question of interest.