reforming the reformers

Are We Listening? Part II of “Sennsible significance” Commentary on Senn’s Guest Post

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Mayo

This is Part II of my commentary on Stephen Senn’s guest post, Be Careful What You Wish For. In this follow-up, I take up two topics:

(1) A terminological point raised in the comments to Part I, and
(2) A broader concern about how a popular reform movement reinforces precisely the mistaken construal Senn warns against.

But first, a question—are we listening? Because what underlies what Senn is saying is subtle, and yet what’s at stake is quite important for today’s statistical controversies. It’s not just a matter of which of four common construals is most apt for the population effect we wish to have high power to detect.[1] As I hear Senn, he’s also flagging a misunderstanding that allows some statistical reformers to (wrongly) dictate what statistical significance testers “wish” for in the first place. Continue reading →

Categories: clinical relevance, power, reforming the reformers, S. Senn | 5 Comments

A statistically significant result indicates H’ (μ > μ’) when POW(μ’) is low (not the other way round)–but don’t ignore the standard error

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Mayo

1. New monsters. One of the bizarre facts of life in the statistics wars is that a method from one school may be criticized on grounds that it conflicts with a conception that is the reverse of what that school intends. How is that even to be deciphered? That was the difficult task I set for myself in writing Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (CUP, 2008) [SIST 2018]. I thought I was done, but new monsters keep appearing. In some cases, rather than see how the notion of severity gets us beyond fallacies, misconstruals are taken to criticize severity! So, for example, in the last couple of posts, here and here, I deciphered some of the better known power howlers (discussed in SIST Ex 5 Tour II) I’m linking to all of this tour (in proofs). Continue reading →

Categories: power, reforming the reformers, SIST, Statistical Inference as Severe Testing | 16 Comments

Do “underpowered” tests “exaggerate” population effects? (iv)

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Mayo

You will often hear that if you reach a just statistically significant result “and the discovery study is underpowered, the observed effects are expected to be inflated” (Ioannidis 2008, p. 64), or “exaggerated” (Gelman and Carlin 2014). This connects to what I’m referring to as the second set of concerns about statistical significance tests, power and magnitude errors. Here, the problem does not revolve around erroneously interpreting power as a posterior probability, as we saw in the fallacy in this post. But there are other points of conflict with the error statistical tester, and much that cries out for clarification — else you will misunderstand the consequences of some of today’s reforms.. Continue reading →

Categories: power, reforming the reformers, SIST, Statistical Inference as Severe Testing | 17 Comments

Memory Lane (4 years ago): Why significance testers should reject the argument to “redefine statistical significance”, even if they want to lower the p-value*

Posted on December 3, 2021 by Mayo

An argument that assumes the very thing that was to have been argued for is guilty of begging the question; signing on to an argument whose conclusion you favor even though you cannot defend its premises is to argue unsoundly, and in bad faith. When a whirlpool of “reforms” subliminally alter the nature and goals of a method, falling into these sins can be quite inadvertent. Start with a simple point on defining the power of a statistical test. Continue reading →

Categories: Bayesian/frequentist, fallacy of rejection, P-values, reforming the reformers, spurious p values | 3 Comments

Tour Guide Mementos From Excursion 3 Tour III: Capability and Severity: Deeper Concepts

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Mayo

Excursion 3 Tour III:

A long-standing family feud among frequentists is between hypotheses tests and confidence intervals (CIs). In fact there’s a clear duality between the two: the parameter values within the (1 – α) CI are those that are not rejectable by the corresponding test at level α. (3.7) illuminates both CIs and severity by means of this duality. A key idea is arguing from the capabilities of methods to what may be inferred. CIs thereby obtain an inferential rationale (beyond performance), and several benchmarks are reported. Continue reading →

Categories: confidence intervals and tests, reforming the reformers, Statistical Inference as Severe Testing | Leave a comment

Why significance testers should reject the argument to “redefine statistical significance”, even if they want to lower the p-value*

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Mayo

I. Redefine Power?

Given that power is one of the most confused concepts from Neyman-Pearson (N-P) frequentist testing, it’s troubling that in “Redefine Statistical Significance”, power gets redefined too. “Power,” we’re told, is a Bayes Factor BF “obtained by defining H₁ as putting ½ probability on μ = ± m for the value of m that gives 75% power for the test of size α = 0.05. This H₁ represents an effect size typical of that which is implicitly assumed by researchers during experimental design.” (material under Figure 1). Continue reading →

Categories: Bayesian/frequentist, fallacy of rejection, P-values, reforming the reformers, spurious p values | 15 Comments

Going round and round again: a roundtable on reproducibility & lowering p-values

Posted on October 26, 2017 by Mayo

There will be a roundtable on reproducibility Friday, October 27th (noon Eastern time), hosted by the International Methods Colloquium, on the reproducibility crisis in social sciences motivated by the paper, “Redefine statistical significance.” Recall, that was the paper written by a megateam of researchers as part of the movement to require p ≤ .005, based on appraising significance tests by a Bayes Factor analysis, with prior probabilities on a point null and a given alternative. It seems to me that if you’re prepared to scrutinize your frequentist (error statistical) method on grounds of Bayes Factors, then you must endorse using Bayes Factors (BFs) for inference to begin with. If you don’t endorse BFs–and, in particular, the BF required to get the disagreement with p-values–*, then it doesn’t make sense to appraise your non-Bayesian method on grounds of agreeing or disagreeing with BFs. For suppose you assess the recommended BFs from the perspective of an error statistical account–that is, one that checks how frequently the method would uncover or avoid the relevant mistaken inference.[i] Then, if you reach the stipulated BF level against a null hypothesis, you will find the situation is reversed, and the recommended BF exaggerates the evidence! (In particular, with high probability, it gives an alternative H’ fairly high posterior probability, or comparatively higher probability, even though H’ is false.) Failing to reach the BF cut-off, by contrast, can find no evidence against, and even finds evidence for, a null hypothesis with high probability, even when non-trivial discrepancies exist. They’re measuring very different things, and it’s illicit to expect an agreement on numbers.[ii] We’ve discussed this quite a lot on this blog (2 are linked below [iii]).

If the given list of panelists is correct, it looks to be 4 against 1, but I’ve no doubt that Lakens can handle it.

Continue reading →

Categories: Announcement, P-values, reforming the reformers, selection effects | 5 Comments

Deconstructing “A World Beyond P-values”

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Mayo

.A world beyond p-values?

I was asked to write something explaining the background of my slides (posted here) in relation to the recent ASA “A World Beyond P-values” conference. I took advantage of some long flight delays on my return to jot down some thoughts:

The contrast between the closing session of the conference “A World Beyond P-values,” and the gist of the conference itself, shines a light on a pervasive tension within the “Beyond P-Values” movement. Two very different debates are taking place. First there’s the debate about how to promote better science. This includes welcome reminders of the timeless demands of rigor and integrity required to avoid deceiving ourselves and others–especially crucial in today’s world of high-powered searches and Big Data. That’s what the closing session was about. [1] Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, Philosophy of Statistics, reforming the reformers | 9 Comments

Thieme on the theme of lowering p-value thresholds (for Slate)

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Mayo

Here’s an article by Nick Thieme on the same theme as my last blogpost. Thieme, who is Slate’s 2017 AAAS Mass Media Fellow, is the first person to interview me on p-values who (a) was prepared to think through the issue for himself (or herself), and (b) included more than a tiny fragment of my side of the exchange.[i]. Please share your comments.

Will Lowering P-Value Thresholds Help Fix Science? P-values are already all over the map, and they’re also not exactly the problem.

By Nick Thieme (for Slate Magazine)

Last week a team of 72 scientists released the preprint of an article attempting to address one aspect of the reproducibility crisis, the crisis of conscience in which scientists are increasingly skeptical about the rigor of our current methods of conducting scientific research.

Their suggestion? Change the threshold for what is considered statistically significant. The team, led by Daniel Benjamin, a behavioral economist from the University of Southern California, is advocating that the “probability value” (p-value) threshold for statistical significance be lowered from the current standard of 0.05 to a much stricter threshold of 0.005. Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, spurious p values | 14 Comments

“A megateam of reproducibility-minded scientists” look to lowering the p-value

Posted on July 25, 2017 by Mayo

Having discussed the “p-values overstate the evidence against the null fallacy” many times over the past few years, I leave it to readers to disinter the issues (pro and con), and appraise the assumptions, in the most recent rehearsal of the well-known Bayesian argument. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with demanding everyone work with a lowered p-value–if you’re so inclined to embrace a single, dichotomous standard without context-dependent interpretations, especially if larger sample sizes are required to compensate the loss of power. But lowering the p-value won’t solve the problems that vex people (biasing selection effects), and is very likely to introduce new ones (see my comment). Kelly Servick, a reporter from Science, gives the ingredients of the main argument given by “a megateam of reproducibility-minded scientists” in an article out today: Continue reading →

Categories: Error Statistics, highly probable vs highly probed, P-values, reforming the reformers | 57 Comments

On the current state of play in the crisis of replication in psychology: some heresies

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Mayo

The replication crisis has created a “cold war between those who built up modern psychology and those” tearing it down with failed replications–or so I read today [i]. As an outsider (to psychology), the severe tester is free to throw some fuel on the fire on both sides. This is a short update on my post “Some ironies in the replication crisis in social psychology” from 2014.

Following the model from clinical trials, an idea gaining steam is to prespecify a “detailed protocol that includes the study rationale, procedure and a detailed analysis plan” (Nosek et.al. 2017). In this new paper, they’re called registered reports (RRs). An excellent start. I say it makes no sense to favor preregistration and deny the relevance to evidence of optional stopping and outcomes other than the one observed. That your appraisal of the evidence is altered when you actually see the history supplied by the RR is equivalent to worrying about biasing selection effects when they’re not written down; your statistical method should pick up on them (as do p-values, confidence levels and many other error probabilities). There’s a tension between the RR requirements and accounts following the Likelihood Principle (no need to name names [ii]). Continue reading →

Categories: Error Statistics, preregistration, reforming the reformers, replication research | 9 Comments

How to tell what’s true about power if you’re practicing within the error-statistical tribe

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Mayo

This is a modified reblog of an earlier post, since I keep seeing papers that confuse this.

Suppose you are reading about a result x that is just statistically significant at level α (i.e., P-value = α) in a one-sided test T+ of the mean of a Normal distribution with n iid samples, and (for simplicity) known σ: H₀: µ ≤ 0 against H₁: µ > 0.

I have heard some people say:

A. If the test’s power to detect alternative µ’ is very low, then the just statistically significant x is poor evidence of a discrepancy (from the null) corresponding to µ’. (i.e., there’s poor evidence that µ > µ’ ).*See point on language in notes.

They will generally also hold that if POW(µ’) is reasonably high (at least .5), then the inference to µ > µ’ is warranted, or at least not problematic.

I have heard other people say:

B. If the test’s power to detect alternative µ’ is very low, then the just statistically significant x is good evidence of a discrepancy (from the null) corresponding to µ’ (i.e., there’s good evidence that µ > µ’).

They will generally also hold that if POW(µ’) is reasonably high (at least .5), then the inference to µ > µ’ is unwarranted.

Which is correct, from the perspective of the (error statistical) philosophy, within which power and associated tests are defined? Continue reading →

Categories: power, reforming the reformers | 17 Comments

If you’re seeing limb-sawing in P-value logic, you’re sawing off the limbs of reductio arguments

Posted on April 15, 2017 by Mayo

I was just reading a paper by Martin and Liu (2014) in which they allude to the “questionable logic of proving H₀ false by using a calculation that assumes it is true”(p. 1704). They say they seek to define a notion of “plausibility” that

“fits the way practitioners use and interpret p-values: a small p-value means H₀ is implausible, given the observed data,” but they seek “a probability calculation that does not require one to assume that H₀ is true, so one avoids the questionable logic of proving H₀ false by using a calculation that assumes it is true“(Martin and Liu 2014, p. 1704).

Questionable? A very standard form of argument is a reductio (ad absurdum) wherein a claim C is inferred (i.e., detached) by falsifying ~C, that is, by showing that assuming ~C entails something in conflict with (if not logically contradicting) known results or known truths [i]. Actual falsification in science is generally a statistical variant of this argument. Supposing H₀in p-value reasoning plays the role of ~C. Yet some aver it thereby “saws off its own limb”! Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 13 Comments

Er, about those other approaches, hold off until a balanced appraisal is in

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Mayo

I could have told them that the degree of accordance enabling the ASA’s “6 principles” on p-values was unlikely to be replicated when it came to most of the “other approaches” with which some would supplement or replace significance tests– notably Bayesian updating, Bayes factors, or likelihood ratios (confidence intervals are dual to hypotheses tests). [My commentary is here.] So now they may be advising a “hold off” or “go slow” approach until some consilience is achieved. Is that it? I don’t know. I was tweeted an article about the background chatter taking place behind the scenes; I wasn’t one of people interviewed for this. Here are some excerpts, I may add more later after it has had time to sink in. (check back later)

“Reaching for Best Practices in Statistics: Proceed with Caution Until a Balanced Critique Is In”

J. Hossiason

“[A]ll of the other approaches*, as well as most statistical tools, may suffer from many of the same problems as the p-values do. What level of likelihood ratio in favor of the research hypothesis will be acceptable to the journal? Should scientific discoveries be based on whether posterior odds pass a specific threshold (P3)? Does either measure the size of an effect (P5)?…How can we decide about the sample size needed for a clinical trial—however analyzed—if we do not set a specific bright-line decision rule? 95% confidence intervals or credence intervals…offer no protection against selection when only those that do not cover 0, are selected into the abstract (P4). (Benjamini, ASA commentary, pp. 3-4)

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander right? Many statisticians seconded George Cobb who urged “the board to set aside time at least once every year to consider the potential value of similar statements” to the recent ASA p-value report. Disappointingly, a preliminary survey of leaders in statistics, many from the original p-value group, aired striking disagreements on best and worst practices with respect to these other approaches. The Executive Board is contemplating a variety of recommendations, minimally, that practitioners move with caution until they can put forward at least a few agreed upon principles for interpreting and applying Bayesian inference methods. The words we heard ranged from “go slow” to “moratorium“ [emphasis mine]. Having been privy to some of the results of this survey, we at Stat Report Watch decided to contact some of the individuals involved. Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 6 Comments

Slides from the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: “Severe Testing: The Key to Error Correction”

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Mayo

Slides from my March 17 presentation on “Severe Testing: The Key to Error Correction” given at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science Alfred I.Taub forum on “Understanding Reproducibility and Error Correction in Science.”

Categories: fallacy of rejection, Fisher, fraud, frequentist/Bayesian, Likelihood Principle, reforming the reformers | 16 Comments

Hocus pocus! Adopt a magician’s stance, if you want to reveal statistical sleights of hand

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Mayo

Here’s the follow-up post to the one I reblogged on Feb 3 (please read that one first). When they sought to subject Uri Geller to the scrutiny of scientists, magicians had to be brought in because only they were sufficiently trained to spot the subtle sleight of hand shifts by which the magician tricks by misdirection. We, too, have to be magicians to discern the subtle misdirections and shifts of meaning in the discussions of statistical significance tests (and other methods)—even by the same statistical guide. We needn’t suppose anything deliberately devious is going on at all! Often, the statistical guidebook reflects shifts of meaning that grow out of one or another critical argument. These days, they trickle down quickly to statistical guidebooks, thanks to popular articles on the “statistics crisis in science”. The danger is that their own guidebooks contain inconsistencies. To adopt the magician’s stance is to be on the lookout for standard sleights of hand. There aren’t that many.[0]

I don’t know Jim Frost, but he gives statistical guidance at the minitab blog. The purpose of my previous post is to point out that Frost uses the probability of a Type I error in two incompatible ways in his posts on significance tests. I assumed he’d want to clear this up, but so far he has not. His response to a comment I made on his blog is this: Continue reading →

Categories: frequentist/Bayesian, P-values, reforming the reformers, S. Senn, Statistics | 39 Comments

High error rates in discussions of error rates: no end in sight

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Mayo

27D0BB5300000578-3168627-image-a-27_1437433320306

waiting for the other shoe to drop…

“Guides for the Perplexed” in statistics become “Guides to Become Perplexed” when “error probabilities” (in relation to statistical hypotheses tests) are confused with posterior probabilities of hypotheses. Moreover, these posteriors are neither frequentist, subjectivist, nor default. Since this doublespeak is becoming more common in some circles, it seems apt to reblog a post from one year ago (you may wish to check the comments).

Do you ever find yourself holding your breath when reading an exposition of significance tests that’s going swimmingly so far? If you’re a frequentist in exile, you know what I mean. I’m sure others feel this way too. When I came across Jim Frost’s posts on The Minitab Blog, I thought I might actually have located a success story. He does a good job explaining P-values (with charts), the duality between P-values and confidence levels, and even rebuts the latest “test ban” (the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy). Mere descriptive reports of observed differences that the editors recommend, Frost shows, are uninterpretable without a corresponding P-value or the equivalent. So far, so good. I have only small quibbles, such as the use of “likelihood” when meaning probability, and various and sundry nitpicky things. But watch how in some places significance levels are defined as the usual error probabilities —indeed in the glossary for the site—while in others it is denied they provide error probabilities. In those other places, error probabilities and error rates shift their meaning to posterior probabilities, based on priors representing the “prevalence” of true null hypotheses.

Begin with one of his kosher posts “Understanding Hypothesis Tests: Significance Levels (Alpha) and P values in Statistics” (blue is Frost): Continue reading →

Categories: highly probable vs highly probed, J. Berger, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 1 Comment

Szucs & Ioannidis Revive the Limb-Sawing Fallacy

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Mayo

When logical fallacies of statistics go uncorrected, they are repeated again and again…and again. And so it is with the limb-sawing fallacy I first posted in one of my “Overheard at the Comedy Hour” posts.* It now resides as a comic criticism of significance tests in a paper by Szucs and Ioannidis (posted this week), Here’s their version:

“[P]aradoxically, when we achieve our goal and successfully reject H₀we will actually be left in complete existential vacuum because during the rejection of H₀NHST ‘saws off its own limb’ (Jaynes, 2003; p. 524): If we manage to reject H₀then it follows that pr(data or more extreme data|H₀) is useless because H₀ is not true” (p.15).

Here’s Jaynes (p. 524):

“Suppose we decide that the effect exists; that is, we reject [null hypothesis] H₀. Surely, we must also reject probabilities conditional on H₀, but then what was the logical justification for the decision? Orthodox logic saws off its own limb.’ “

Ha! Ha! By this reasoning, no hypothetical testing or falsification could ever occur. As soon as H is falsified, the grounds for falsifying disappear! If H: all swans are white, then if I see a black swan, H is falsified. But according to this criticism, we can no longer assume the deduced prediction from H! What? Continue reading →

Categories: Error Statistics, P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 14 Comments

Mayo & Parker “Using PhilStat to Make Progress in the Replication Crisis in Psych” SPSP Slides

Posted on June 19, 2016 by Mayo

Here are the slides from our talk at the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) conference. I covered the first 27, Parker the rest. The abstract is here:

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, replication research, Statistics, StatSci meets PhilSci | Leave a comment

“So you banned p-values, how’s that working out for you?” D. Lakens exposes the consequences of a puzzling “ban” on statistical inference

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Mayo

I came across an excellent post on a blog kept by Daniel Lakens: “So you banned p-values, how’s that working out for you?” He refers to the journal that recently banned significance tests, confidence intervals, and a vague assortment of other statistical methods, on the grounds that all such statistical inference tools are “invalid” since they don’t provide posterior probabilities of some sort (see my post). The editors’ charge of “invalidity” could only hold water if these error statistical methods purport to provide posteriors based on priors, which is false. The entire methodology is based on methods in which probabilities arise to qualify the method’s capabilities to detect and avoid erroneous interpretations of data [0]. The logic is of the falsification variety found throughout science. Lakens, an experimental psychologist, does a great job delineating some of the untoward consequences of their inferential ban. I insert some remarks in black. Continue reading →

Categories: frequentist/Bayesian, Honorary Mention, P-values, reforming the reformers, science communication, Statistics | 45 Comments

reforming the reformers

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