Statistical Significance and Scientific Misconduct: Improving the Style of the Published Research Paper

Abstract

A science, business, or law that is basing its validity on the level of p-values, t statistics and other tests of statistical significance is looking less and less relevant and more and more unethical. Here is a fact rather tough to swallow: today’s economist devotes a lot of time and energy and wit to putting a clever index of opportunity cost into his model or game; but then, like the amnesiac or weaker college freshman, he fails to see opportunity cost in statistical estimates and interpretations he makes of those very same models. Medicine, psychology, and pharmacology are similarly damaged by this fundamental error of science, keeping bad treatments and drugs on the market and good ones out. A few small changes to the style of the published research paper using statistical methods can bring large beneficial effects to more than academic research papers. It is suggested that misuse of statistical significance be added to the definition of scientific misconduct which is currently used and enforced by the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Research Integrity, the National Science Foundation and others.