Conceptual and Statistical Knowledge

 

Consequences of prejudice against the null hypothesis.

Examined the consequences of prejudice against accepting the null hypothesis through (a) a mathematical model intended to stimulate the research-publication process and (b) case studies of apparent erroneous rejections of the null hypothesis in …

Construct validation in social and personality research: Current practice and recommendations.

The verity of results about a psychological construct hinges on the validity of its measurement, making construct validation a fundamental methodology to the scientific process. We reviewed a representative sample of articles published in the Journal …

Erroneous analyses of interactions in neuroscience: a problem of significance.

In theory, a comparison of two experimental effects requires a statistical test on their difference. In practice, this comparison is often based on an incorrect procedure involving two separate tests in which researchers conclude that effects differ …

HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known

This article considers a practice in scientific communication termed HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known). HARKing is defined as presenting a post hoc hypothesis (i.e., one based on or informed by one's results) in one's research …

Justify your alpha

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.

Measurement error and the replication crisis.

The assumption that measurement error always reduces effect sizes is false

On the plurality of (methodological) worlds: estimating the analytic flexibility of fMRI experiments

How likely are published findings in the functional neuroimaging literature to be false? According to a recent mathematical model, the potential for false positives increases with the flexibility of analysis methods. Functional MRI (fMRI) experiments …

P Values and Statistical Practice

An article about P Values and Statistical Practice

Power-up: A reanalysis of ‘power failure’ in neuroscience using mixture modeling.

Recently, evidence for endemically low statistical power has cast neuroscience findings into doubt. If low statistical power plagues neuroscience, then this reduces confidence in the reported effects. However, if statistical power is not uniformly …

Redefine statistical signifcance

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical signifcance from 0.05 to 0.005 for claims of new discoveries.
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