ArticleAmerican journal of epidemiology2017
The Harm Done to Reproducibility by the Culture of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing.
Article in American journal of epidemiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
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- How can we make sound replication decisions?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Gestational exposure to environmental chemical mixtures and cognitive abilities in children: A pooled analysis of two North American birth cohorts.Environment international · 2025Article
- Personal, community, and societal factors associated with mukbang viewing among adolescents: findings from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey.Epidemiology and health · 2025Article
- Then a miracle occurs: cause, effect, and the heterogeneity of criminal justice research.Journal of experimental criminology · 2025Article
- Sex Differences in Antihypertensive Medications and PTSD Incidence.Clinical epidemiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Alcohol use disorders after bariatric surgery: a study using linked health claims and survey data.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2024Article
- Evaluation of mortality among Marines, Navy personnel, and civilian workers exposed to contaminated drinking water at USMC base Camp Lejeune: a cohort study.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2024Article
- Racial disparities in initiation of chemotherapy among breast cancer patients with discretionary treatment indication in the state of Georgia.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2024Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the last few years, stakeholders in the scientific community have raised alarms about a perceived lack of reproducibility of scientific results. In reaction, guidelines for journals have been promulgated and grant applicants have been asked to address the rigor and reproducibility of their proposed projects. Neither solution addresses a primary culprit, which is the culture of null hypothesis significance testing that dominates statistical analysis and inference. In an innovative research enterprise, selection of results for further evaluation based on null hypothesis significance testing is doomed to yield a low proportion of reproducible results and a high proportion of effects that are initially overestimated. In addition, the culture of null hypothesis significance testing discourages quantitative adjustments to account for systematic errors and quantitative incorporation of prior information. These strategies would otherwise improve reproducibility and have not been previously proposed in the widely cited literature on this topic. Without discarding the culture of null hypothesis significance testing and implementing these alternative methods for statistical analysis and inference, all other strategies for improving reproducibility will yield marginal gains at best.
Indexed as
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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.