ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2016
The fallacy of placing confidence in confidence intervals.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers, 10 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
141 citing papers in PubMed, 10 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
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- The Fragility of Statistical Significance in Cartilage Restoration of the Knee: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.Cartilage · 2021Pooled it
- Auditory Distraction During Reading: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis of a Continuing Controversy.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2018Pooled it
- Intranasal Oxytocin May Improve High-Level Social Cognition in Schizophrenia, But Not Social Cognition or Neurocognition in General: A Multilevel Bayesian Meta-analysis.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2017Pooled it
- Visual Task Demands and the Auditory Mismatch Negativity: An Empirical Study and a Meta-Analysis.PloS one · 2016Pooled it
- Alcohol substitution during one month of cannabis abstinence among non-treatment seeking youth.Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry · 2021Trial
- PEG vs. sennosides for opioid-induced constipation in cancer care.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2020Trial
- Simple and rationale-providing SMS reminders to promote accelerometer use: a within-trial randomised trial comparing persuasive messages.BMC public health · 2018Trial
- School Placement Outcomes Following Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention in a Routine Clinical Care Setting.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Bias and precision in true-score estimation.The British journal of mathematical and statistical psychology · 2026Article
- A Unified Scale for Interpreting Quantitative Measurements Across Distributions.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Article
- A Bayesian Modeling Approach to Optimize Longitudinal Biomarker Sampling Schedules Using Hormonal Data.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Things are looking (farther) up: Upward gaze orientation is overestimated.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- A Novel Approach to the Design and Sample Size Planning of Animal Experiments Based on Effect Estimation.Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift · 2026Article
- A Tutorial on Conducting and Interpreting a Bayesian Independent T-Test Using Open-Source Software.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Article
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Interval estimates - estimates of parameters that include an allowance for sampling uncertainty - have long been touted as a key component of statistical analyses. There are several kinds of interval estimates, but the most popular are confidence intervals (CIs): intervals that contain the true parameter value in some known proportion of repeated samples, on average. The width of confidence intervals is thought to index the precision of an estimate; CIs are thought to be a guide to which parameter values are plausible or reasonable; and the confidence coefficient of the interval (e.g., 95 %) is thought to index the plausibility that the true parameter is included in the interval. We show in a number of examples that CIs do not necessarily have any of these properties, and can lead to unjustified or arbitrary inferences. For this reason, we caution against relying upon confidence interval theory to justify interval estimates, and suggest that other theories of interval estimation should be used instead.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.