Published in:
01-11-2019 | Editorial
The p value wars (again)
Author:
Ulrich Dirnagl
Published in:
European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
|
Issue 12/2019
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Excerpt
More than 800 researchers, many of them prominent biostatisticians, called to “raise up against the
p-value.” [
1] This recent battle cry was just the climax of a growing insurrection, which prominently surfaced in 2018 when another group of biostatisticians demanded that we should “redefine statistical significance,” [
2] and proposed to change the default
p value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005 for claims of new discoveries. For many researchers and experts, this demand did not go far enough; in a follow-up statement, they demanded to “remove rather than redefine statistical significance.” [
3] This apparent upheaval even made it into the lay press. The
Financial Times, for example, analyzed that “Scientists strike back against statistical tyranny.” [
4] What’s all the fuzz about? …