The significance of p
After 20 years or so in research, I think that I am finally 95% sure that I understand the significance of p. It is often said (as I have done) in many a Methods Section that a “p-value of 0.05 was considered statistically significant”. I now think this is sloppy writing. First an aside about the dangers of a threshold. When p>0.05 there’s often several (bad) things we might do: Such as really bad- I.e. p-hacking https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25768323/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27510514/ Or sometimes useful and sometimes hilarious- I.e. playing fast and loose with our words (like these many examples: https://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not-significant-2/ https://twitter.com/mc_hankins) But this all…