2021/09/01 by Yoav Benjamini, Richard D. De Veaux, Bradley Efron +12 · 1 citation
Mathematics · #Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials #Task force #Statement (logic) #Task (project management) #Statistical analysis #Statistics #Computer science #Econometrics #Natural language processing #Mathematics #Political science #Law #Management #Economics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1214/21-aoas1501
openalex publication_date 2021/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Over the past decade, the sciences have experienced elevated concerns about the replicability of study results. An important aspect of replicability is the use of statistical methods for framing conclusions. In 2019 the President of the American Statistical Association (ASA) established a task force to address concerns that a 2019 editorial in The American Statisti cian (an ASA journal) might be mistakenly interpreted as official ASA policy. (The 2019 editorial recommended eliminating the use of “p < 0.05” and “statistically significant” in statistical analysis.) This document is the statement of the task force, and the ASA invited us to publicize it. Its purpose is two-fold: to clarify that the use of P -values and significance testing, properly applied and interpreted, are important tools that should not be abandoned, and to briefly set out some principles of sound statistical inference that may be useful to the scientific community.