Journal article

Manipulating the Alpha Level Cannot Cure Significance Testing.

  • Trafimow D Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
  • Amrhein V Zoological Institute, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
  • Areshenkoff CN Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
  • Barrera-Causil CJ Faculty of Applied and Exact Sciences, Metropolitan Technological Institute, Medellín, Colombia.
  • Beh EJ School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.
  • Bilgiç YK Department of Mathematics, State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo, NY, United States.
  • Bono R Quantitative Psychology Unit, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
  • Bradley MT Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada.
  • Briggs WM Independent Researcher, New York, NY, United States.
  • Cepeda-Freyre HA School of Psychology, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico.
  • Chaigneau SE Center for Social and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile.
  • Ciocca DR Oncology Laboratory, Instituto de Medicina y Biologia Experimental de Cuyo, CCT CONICET Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina.
  • Correa JC School of Statistics, Faculty of Sciences, National University of Colombia, Medellín, Colombia.
  • Cousineau D School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
  • de Boer MR Department of Health Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • Dhar SS Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.
  • Dolgov I Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
  • Gómez-Benito J Quantitative Psychology Unit, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
  • Grendar M Biomedical Center Martin, Jessenius Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University, Martin, Slovakia.
  • Grice JW Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States.
  • Guerrero-Gimenez ME Oncology Laboratory, Instituto de Medicina y Biologia Experimental de Cuyo, CCT CONICET Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina.
  • Gutiérrez A Faculty of Statistics, Saint Thomas University, Bogotá, Colombia.
  • Huedo-Medina TB Department of Allied Health Sciences, College of Health, Agriculture, and Natural Resources, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.
  • Jaffe K Departamento de Biología de Organismos, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela.
  • Janyan A Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria.
  • Karimnezhad A Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Immunology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
  • Korner-Nievergelt F Swiss Ornithological Institute, Sempach, Switzerland.
  • Kosugi K School of Human Sciences, Senshu University, Kawasaki, Japan.
  • Lachmair M Multimodal Interaction Lab, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany.
  • Ledesma RD Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Mar del Plata, Argentina.
  • Limongi R Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile.
  • Liuzza MT Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, "Magna Graecia" University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy.
  • Lombardo R Economics Department, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Capua, Italy.
  • Marks MJ Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
  • Meinlschmidt G Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
  • Nalborczyk L Université Grenoble Alpes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LPNC, Grenoble, France.
  • Nguyen HT Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
  • Ospina R Computational Statistics Laboratory (CAST), Department of Statistics, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
  • Perezgonzalez JD Business School, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand.
  • Pfister R Department of Psychology III, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
  • Rahona JJ Multimodal Interaction Lab, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany.
  • Rodríguez-Medina DA School of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico.
  • Romão X CONSTRUCT-LESE, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
  • Ruiz-Fernández S Multimodal Interaction Lab, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany.
  • Suarez I Department of Psychology, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia.
  • Tegethoff M Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
  • Tejo M Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Exactas, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile.
  • van de Schoot R Department of Methods and Statistics, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
  • Vankov II Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria.
  • Velasco-Forero S MINES Paristech, PSL Research University, Centre for Mathematical Morphology, Paris, France.
  • Wang T Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
  • Yamada Y Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
  • Zoppino FCM Oncology Laboratory, Instituto de Medicina y Biologia Experimental de Cuyo, CCT CONICET Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina.
  • Marmolejo-Ramos F School of Psychology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Show more…
  • 2018-06-06
Published in:
  • Frontiers in psychology. - 2018
English We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance testing altogether. There are alternatives that address study design and sample size much more directly than significance testing does; but none of the statistical tools should be taken as the new magic method giving clear-cut mechanical answers. Inference should not be based on single studies at all, but on cumulative evidence from multiple independent studies. When evaluating the strength of the evidence, we should consider, for example, auxiliary assumptions, the strength of the experimental design, and implications for applications. To boil all this down to a binary decision based on a p-value threshold of 0.05, 0.01, 0.005, or anything else, is not acceptable.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/93420
Statistics

Document views: 84 File downloads:
  • Full-text: 0