by Statistical significance testing — pseudo-intellectual garbage Decisions based on statistical significance testing certainly make life easier. But significance testing doesn’t give us the knowledge we want. It only gives an answer to a question we as researchers never ask — what is the probability of getting the result we have got, assuming that there is no difference between two sets of data (e. g. control group – experimental group, sample – population). On answering the question we really are interested in — how probable and reliable is our hypothesis — it remains silent. One wonders whether the function of statistical techniques in the social sciences is not primarily to provide a machinery for producing phoney corroborations and thereby a semblance of ‘scientific progress’ where, in fact, there is nothing but an increase in pseudo-intellectual garbage.
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Statistical significance testing — pseudo-intellectual garbage
Decisions based on statistical significance testing certainly make life easier. But significance testing doesn’t give us the knowledge we want. It only gives an answer to a question we as researchers never ask — what is the probability of getting the result we have got, assuming that there is no difference between two sets of data (e. g. control group – experimental group, sample – population). On answering the question we really are interested in — how probable and reliable is our hypothesis — it remains silent.
One wonders whether the function of statistical techniques in the social sciences is not primarily to provide a machinery for producing phoney corroborations and thereby a semblance of ‘scientific progress’ where, in fact, there is nothing but an increase in pseudo-intellectual garbage. …
