D. Lakens

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Daniël Lakens

Associate Professor
Human Technology Interaction
Eindhoven University of Technology

Averting journal editors from making fools of themselves

In a recent editorial, Mayo (2021) warns journal editors to avoid calls for authors guidelines to reflect a particular statistical philosophy, and not to go beyond merely enforcing the proper use of significance tests. That such a warning is needed at all should embarrass anyone working in statistics. And yet, a mere three weeks after Mayo’s editorial was published, the need for such warnings was reinforced when a co-editorial by journal editors from the International Society of Physiotherapy (Elkins et al., 2021) titled “Statistical inference through estimation: recommendations from the International Society of Physiotherapy Journal Editors” stated: “[This editorial] also advises researchers that some physiotherapy journals that are members of the International Society of Physiotherapy Journal Editors (ISPJE) will be expecting manuscripts to use estimation methods instead of null hypothesis statistical tests.” Continue reading →