Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41151754›Full record

ReviewBiology letters2025

Saying 'no' with confidence: statistical approaches to test for the absence of an effect.

Lewis G Halsey

Abstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Biology letters, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Reporting of second-generationContemporary clinical trials communications · 2026
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Lewis G HalseySchool of Life and Health Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK.ORCID 0000-0002-0786-7585

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Publishing non-significant findings is essential for the progress of science. However, many of us forget that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' and believe that a statistically non-significant result is evidence of no effect. Regrettably, and despite the null hypothesis being simple, elegant and often underpinned by evidenced or reasoned convictions, conventional

Indexed as

BiologyData Interpretation, StatisticalBayes TheoremConfidence IntervalsLikelihood FunctionsSoftwareBayes factorsBayesian estimationsconfidence intervalsequivalence testinglikelihood ratiosnull hypothesis significance testing

Identifiers

PMID41151754
PMCPMC12567074

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.