Ditching Statistical Significance: The Most Talked-About Paper Ever?

Well, that might be a stretch, but in relation to the Nature Comment that Bob and I signed to support, Altmetric tweeted:

John Ioannidis published this criticism of the Comment, with the subtitle Do Not Abandon Significance. Much of what he writes is sensible, and in agreement with the Comment, but in my opinion he doesn’t make a concerted or convincing case for not abandoning statistical significance. He hardly seems to attempt to assemble such a case, despite that subtitle.

The authors of the Comment, joined by Andrew Gelman, replied. Their reply, titled Abandoning statistical significance is both sensible and practical, strikes me as succinct, clear, and convincing.

I’m still working through the 43 TAS articles that prompted the Nature Comment. I’ll report.

In the meantime I continue to be so happy that statistical significance may at last be receiving its comeuppance. The battalion of scholars who have published swingeing critiques of NHST since around 1950 may at last be vindicated!

Now we just need all this great progress to filter through to instructors of the intro stats course, so that they can feel emboldened to adopt ITNS. Then we’ll know that things have really changed for the better!

Geoff