Inline below. -- Bert
Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Statistics -----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Greg Snow Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 2:37 PM To: Bak Kuss; murdoch.dun...@gmail.com; jorism...@gmail.com Cc: R-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] P values Bak, ... " Small p-values indicate a hypothesis and data that are not very consistent and for small enough p-values we would rather disbelieve the hypothesis (though it may still be theoretically possible). " This is false. It is only true when the hypotheses are prespecified (not derived from looking at the data first), when there's only one being tested (not,say, 10,000), etc. etc. (Incidentally, "small enough" is not meaningful; making it so is usually impossible). IMHO far from being niggling details, these are the crux of the reason that the conventional use of P values to decide what is scientifically "valid" and what is not is a pox upon science. This is not an original view, of course. Don't want to stir up a hornet's nest, so feel free to silently dismiss. But contrary views are welcome, as always. No more from me on this -- I promise! -- Bert ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
