reforming the reformers

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 | 55 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

Frequentstein: What’s wrong with (1 – β)/α as a measure of evidence against the null? (ii)

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Mayo

In their “Comment: A Simple Alternative to p-values,” (on the ASA P-value document), Benjamin and Berger (2016) recommend researchers report a pre-data Rejection Ratio:

It is the probability of rejection when the alternative hypothesis is true, divided by the probability of rejection when the null hypothesis is true, i.e., the ratio of the power of the experiment to the Type I error of the experiment. The rejection ratio has a straightforward interpretation as quantifying the strength of evidence about the alternative hypothesis relative to the null hypothesis conveyed by the experimental result being statistically significant. (Benjamin and Berger 2016, p. 1)

The recommendation is much more fully fleshed out in a 2016 paper by Bayarri, Benjamin, Berger, and Sellke (BBBS 2016): Rejection Odds and Rejection Ratios: A Proposal for Statistical Practice in Testing Hypotheses. Their recommendation is:

…that researchers should report the ‘pre-experimental rejection ratio’ when presenting their experimental design and researchers should report the ‘post-experimental rejection ratio’ (or Bayes factor) when presenting their experimental results. (BBBS 2016, p. 3)….

The (pre-experimental) ‘rejection ratio’ R_pre , the ratio of statistical power to significance threshold (i.e., the ratio of the probability of rejecting under H₁ and H₀ respectively), is shown to capture the strength of evidence in the experiment for H₁over H₀. (ibid., p. 2)

But in fact it does no such thing! [See my post from the FUSION conference here.] J. Berger, and his co-authors, will tell you the rejection ratio (and a variety of other measures created over the years) are entirely frequentist because they are created out of frequentist error statistical measures. But a creation built on frequentist measures doesn’t mean the resulting animal captures frequentist error statistical reasoning. It might be a kind of Frequentstein monster! [1] Continue reading →

Categories: J. Berger, power, reforming the reformers, S. Senn, Statistical power, Statistics | 36 Comments

Fallacies of Rejection, Nouvelle Cuisine, and assorted New Monsters

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Mayo

Jackie Mason

Whenever I’m in London, my criminologist friend Katrin H. and I go in search of stand-up comedy. Since it’s Saturday night (and I’m in London), we’re setting out in search of a good comedy club (I’ll complete this post upon return). A few years ago we heard Jackie Mason do his shtick, a one-man show billed as his swan song to England. It was like a repertoire of his “Greatest Hits” without a new or updated joke in the mix. Still, hearing his rants for the n^th time was often quite hilarious. It turns out that he has already been back doing another “final shtick tour” in England, but not tonight.

A sample: If you want to eat nothing, eat nouvelle cuisine. Do you know what it means? No food. The smaller the portion the more impressed people are, so long as the food’s got a fancy French name, haute cuisine. An empty plate with sauce!

As one critic wrote, Mason’s jokes “offer a window to a different era,” one whose caricatures and biases one can only hope we’ve moved beyond:

But it’s one thing for Jackie Mason to scowl at a seat in the front row and yell to the shocked audience member in his imagination, “These are jokes! They are just jokes!” and another to reprise statistical howlers, which are not jokes, to me. This blog found its reason for being partly as a place to expose, understand, and avoid them. I had earlier used this Jackie Mason opening to launch into a well-known fallacy of rejection using statistical significance tests. I’m going to go further this time around. I began by needling some leading philosophers of statistics: Continue reading →

Categories: reforming the reformers, science-wise screening, Statistical power, statistical tests, Statistics | Tags: criticism of frequentist methods, fallacy of rejection, Jackie Mason, sample size, significance tests | 5 Comments

A. Spanos: Talking back to the critics using error statistics

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Mayo

Given all the recent attention given to kvetching about significance tests, it’s an apt time to reblog Aris Spanos’ overview of the error statistician talking back to the critics [1]. A related paper for your Saturday night reading is Mayo and Spanos (2011).[2] It mixes the error statistical philosophy of science with its philosophy of statistics, introduces severity, and responds to 13 criticisms and howlers.

I’m going to comment on some of the ASA discussion contributions I hadn’t discussed earlier. Please share your thoughts in relation to any of this.

[1]It was first blogged here, as part of our seminar 2 years ago.

[2] For those seeking a bit more balance to the main menu offered in the ASA Statistical Significance Reference list.

Philosophy-laden meta-statistics: Is “technical activism” free of statistical philosophy? (ii)

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Mayo

Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science), in a Nature article today (“Make Journals Report Clinical Trials Properly“), expresses puzzlement as to why bad statistical practices– “selective publication, inadequate descriptions of study methods that block efforts at replication, and data dredging through undisclosed use of multiple analytical strategies“–are continuing to occur even in the face of the new “technical activism” (a great term he introduces). Worse, these questionable practices are actually being defended by some medical journals. “[J]ournal editors now need to engage in a serious public discussion on why this is still happening“. Goldacre doesn’t consider that at least some of the pushback he’s seeing has a basis in statistical philosophy! I explain at the end. Here’s Goldacre (Feb 2, 2016; emphasis mine):

Science is in flux. The basics of a rigorous scientific method were worked out many years ago, but there is now growing concern about systematic structural flaws that undermine the integrity of published data: selective publication, inadequate descriptions of study methods that block efforts at replication, and data dredging through undisclosed use of multiple analytical strategies. Problems such as these undermine the integrity of published data and increase the risk of exaggerated or even false-positive findings, leading collectively to the ‘replication crisis’. Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 60 Comments

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

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Mayo

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]

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, statistical tests | 2 Comments

High error rates in discussions of error rates (1/21/16 update)

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Mayo

waiting for the other shoe to drop…

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 and error rates—indeed in the glossary for the site—while in others it is denied they provide error rates. 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. Continue reading →

Categories: highly probable vs highly probed, J. Berger, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 11 Comments

Stephen Senn: Double Jeopardy?: Judge Jeffreys Upholds the Law (sequel to the pathetic P-value)[4]

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Mayo

S. Senn

Stephen Senn
Head of Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS)
Luxembourg Institute of Health

Double Jeopardy?: Judge Jeffreys Upholds the Law*[4]

“But this could be dealt with in a rough empirical way by taking twice the standard error as a criterion for possible genuineness and three times the standard error for definite acceptance”. Harold Jeffreys(1) (p386)

This is the second of two posts on P-values. In the first, The Pathetic P-Value, I considered the relation of P-values to Laplace’s Bayesian formulation of induction, pointing out that that P-values, whilst they had a very different interpretation, were numerically very similar to a type of Bayesian posterior probability. In this one, I consider their relation or lack of it, to Harold Jeffreys’s radically different approach to significance testing. (An excellent account of the development of Jeffreys’s thought is given by Howie(2), which I recommend highly.)

The story starts with Cambridge philosopher CD Broad (1887-1971), who in 1918 pointed to a difficulty with Laplace’s Law of Succession. Broad considers the problem of drawing counters from an urn containing n counters and supposes that all m drawn had been observed to be white. He now considers two very different questions, which have two very different probabilities and writes: Continue reading →

Categories: Jeffreys, P-values, reforming the reformers, Stephen Senn | Tags: let PBP | 11 Comments

WHIPPING BOYS AND WITCH HUNTERS (ii)

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Mayo

At least as apt today as 3 years ago…HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Memory Lane with new comments in blue.

In an earlier post I alleged that frequentist hypotheses tests often serve as whipping boys, by which I meant “scapegoats”, for the well-known misuses, abuses, and flagrant misinterpretations of tests (both simple Fisherian significance tests and Neyman-Pearson tests, although in different ways)—as well as for what really boils down to a field’s weaknesses in modeling, theorizing, experimentation, and data collection. Checking the history of this term however, there is a certain disanalogy with at least the original meaning of a “whipping boy,” namely, an innocent boy who was punished when a medieval prince misbehaved and was in need of discipline. It was thought that seeing an innocent companion, often a friend, beaten for his own transgressions would supply an effective way to ensure the prince would not repeat the same mistake. But significance tests floggings, rather than a tool for a humbled self-improvement and commitment to avoiding flagrant rule violations, has tended instead to yield declarations that it is the rules that are invalid! The violators are excused as not being able to help it! The situation is more akin to that of witch hunting that in some places became an occupation in its own right.

Now some early literature, e.g., Morrison and Henkel’s Significance Test Controversy (1962), performed an important service over fifty years ago. They alerted social scientists to the fallacies of significance tests: misidentifying a statistically significant difference with one of substantive importance, interpreting insignificant results as evidence for the null hypothesis—especially problematic with insensitive tests, and the like. Chastising social scientists for applying significance tests in slavish and unthinking ways, contributors call attention to a cluster of pitfalls and fallacies of testing. Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, significance tests, Statistics | Tags: reformers, significance test controversies, significance tests | Leave a comment

reforming the reformers

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Szucs & Ioannidis Revive the Limb-Sawing Fallacy

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

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

Frequentstein: What’s wrong with (1 – β)/α as a measure of evidence against the null? (ii)

Fallacies of Rejection, Nouvelle Cuisine, and assorted New Monsters

A. Spanos: Talking back to the critics using error statistics

Philosophy-laden meta-statistics: Is “technical activism” free of statistical philosophy? (ii)

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

High error rates in discussions of error rates (1/21/16 update)

Stephen Senn: Double Jeopardy?: Judge Jeffreys Upholds the Law (sequel to the pathetic P-value)[4]

WHIPPING BOYS AND WITCH HUNTERS (ii)

October Palindrome: torpedo + Elba

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