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The Cult of Statistical Significance

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There is a new book called The Cult of Statistical Significance by Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey which seems to be an important one to me. The book shows how many scientific disciplines rely way too much on the concept of statistical significance. I have read the book and I find it convincing. The authors show how the focus on statistical significance has taken away attention for 'real' significance. In other words: the focus on statistical significance often means that researchers fail to ask whether their findings matter. In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. So testing for statistical significance is asking the question how likely it is that an effect exists. It tries to answer that question by looking at how precisely the effect can be measured. It does not answer at all how strong and important this effect is. And this latter question about the effect size is much more important from a sc