Re: Statistical inference and effect measures in abstracts of randomized trials, 1975-2021

Excerpt

In 2016, the American Statistical Association [ASA] explicitly stated, “The widespread use of ‘statistical significance’ (generally interpreted as ‘p ≤ 0.05’) as a license for making a claim of a scientific finding (or implied truth) leads to considerable distortion of the scientific process.” [2]. More recently, the ASA provided an even stronger statement that “it is time to stop using the term ‘statistically significant’ entirely. Nor should variants such as ‘significantly different,’ ‘p < 0.05,’ and ‘nonsignificant’ survive, whether expressed in words, by asterisks in a table, or in some other way. Whether it was ever useful, a declaration of ‘statistical significance’ has today become meaningless” [3].