the idea of the p-value is a useful and reasonable one. it's a good statistical tool that can help you tell whether your results are due to something real in th

the idea of the p-value is a useful and reasonable one. it's a good statistical tool that can help you tell whether your results are due to something real in the world or just dumb luck. the problem is people leaning on it too heavily and especially obsessing over the 0.05 threshold: so that p=0.049 means your result is statistically significant, you get a paper published and a press release and tenure, while p=0.051 means failure and penury. the article is arguing specifically against this latter practice, of "bucketing" things according to some cutoff which was literally made up arbitrarily by Ronald Fisher.