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if i were the King of All Science and were feeling despotic, I would do the opposite, I think -- put a moratorium for a few years on any publication of a p-valu
by currymj 9y ago
if i were the King of All Science and were feeling despotic, I would do the opposite, I think -- put a moratorium for a few years on any publication of a p-value.
Scientists would still be free to make use of hypothesis testing to guide their research. In publications, one could use Bayesian methods and report a full posterior. One could also just give enough information about the null hypothesis and whatever distributions are involved to allow the computation of a p-value.
However, any attempt to explicitly publish the p-value itself would result in creative and embarrassing punishments.
- BeetleB 9y ago>In publications, one could use Bayesian methods and report a full posterior. I fail to see how this is superior. I'd never advocate banning a legitimate tool just because of abuse.
- currymj 9y agoI mean, it was a "modest proposal" type of suggestion. There are a lot of researchers who have a limited knowledge of statistics and who basically treat the p-value as a magic number. I don't have any sort of philosophical problem with p-values or the tools of hypothesis testing, but I think it would be good for science if the magic number were less salient, if that makes sense.