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"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." A null result (no significant evidence for anything, a p value above 0.05) is truly null. It doesn't even co
by 08-15 8y ago
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
A null result (no significant evidence for anything, a p value above 0.05) is truly null. It doesn't even confirm the null hypothesis.
Common wisdom says that Statistical Hypothesis Inference Testing doesn't work because researchers engage in "P Hacking". That's a half truth, researchers really don't understand the meaning of the p-value.
- wnoise 8y agoWhich is completely bogus. Absence of evidence, when evidence is expected is indeed (possibly weak) evidence of absence. The stronger "absence of proof is proof of absence" would be fallacious.
- antidesitter 8y ago> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A more accurate way to state this is “Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence”. Or “Absence of evidence may or may not be evidence of absence depending on the circumstance”, though it doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily.
- 08-15 8y agoWell, the long version is this: "When trying to reject the null hypothesis (sensu Fisher), absence of evidence (for its invalidity) is not evidence of absence (of its invalidity)." Fisher wasn't the only statistician, he wasn't the only confused one either. We can go with Neyman and Pearson instead: "When trying to reject the null hypothesis with a sufficiently powerful experiment, absence of evidence is evidence of absence." This requires a power analysis, which is something most studies lack. Constantly reminding everyone of these details and misguided philosophical differences is tiresome, so I prefer to go with Laplace, Bayes, and Jaynes: "Everything is evidence."