Editing Statistical significance (section)

=== Redefining significance ===
In 2016, the [[American Statistical Association]] (ASA) published a statement on ''p''-values, saying that "the widespread use of 'statistical significance' (generally interpreted as '''p''&nbsp;≤ 0.05') as a license for making a claim of a scientific finding (or implied truth) leads to considerable distortion of the scientific process".<ref name="Wasserstein 129–133"/> In 2017, a group of 72 authors proposed to enhance reproducibility by changing the ''p''-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Benjamin|first=Daniel |display-authors=etal |title=Redefine statistical significance|journal=Nature Human Behaviour|volume=1|issue=1 |pages=6–10|doi=10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z|pmid=30980045 |year=2018 |doi-access=free|hdl=10281/184094|hdl-access=free}}</ref> Other researchers responded that imposing a more stringent significance threshold would aggravate problems such as [[data dredging]]; alternative propositions are thus to select and justify flexible ''p''-value thresholds before collecting data,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chawla|first=Dalmeet|date=2017|title='One-size-fits-all' threshold for P values under fire|url=https://www.nature.com/news/one-size-fits-all-threshold-for-p-values-under-fire-1.22625|journal=Nature|doi=10.1038/nature.2017.22625}}</ref> or to interpret ''p''-values as continuous indices, thereby discarding thresholds and statistical significance.<ref>{{cite journal|last1= Amrhein|first1 = Valentin|last2=Greenland |first2=Sander|title=Remove, rather than redefine, statistical significance|journal=Nature Human Behaviour|date=2017|volume=2|issue = 1|page=0224|doi=10.1038/s41562-017-0224-0|pmid = 30980046|s2cid = 46814177}}</ref> Additionally, the change to 0.005 would increase the likelihood of false negatives, whereby the effect being studied is real, but the test fails to show it.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Vyse |first1=Stuart |title=Moving Science's Statistical Goalposts |url=https://www.csicop.org/si/show/moving_sciences_statistical_goal_posts |website=csicop.org |date=November 2017 |publisher=CSI |access-date=10 July 2018}}</ref>

In 2019, over 800 statisticians and scientists signed a message calling for the abandonment of the term "statistical significance" in science,<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=McShane|first1=Blake|last2=Greenland|first2=Sander|last3=Amrhein|first3=Valentin|date=March 2019|title=Scientists rise up against statistical significance|journal=Nature|language=EN|volume=567|issue=7748|pages=305–307|doi=10.1038/d41586-019-00857-9|pmid=30894741|bibcode=2019Natur.567..305A |doi-access=free}}</ref> and the ASA published a further official statement <ref name="Wasserstein2 129–133">{{Cite journal|last1=Wasserstein|first1=Ronald L.|last2=Schirm|first2=Allen L.|last3=Lazar|first3=Nicole A.|date=2019-03-20|title=Moving to a World Beyond "p < 0.05"|journal= [[The American Statistician]]|volume=73|issue=sup1|pages=1–19| doi=10.1080/00031305.2019.1583913|doi-access=free}}</ref> declaring (page 2): {{Blockquote
|text=We conclude, based on our review of the articles in this special issue and the broader literature, that it is time to stop using the term "statistically significant" entirely. Nor should variants such as "significantly different," "<math>p \le 0.05</math>," and "nonsignificant" survive, whether expressed in words, by asterisks in a table, or in some other way.}}