ACTA webinar: Tackling dichotomania (p<0.05) and other statistical diseases in pursuit of better science

Topics:STInG Statistics

Ten years after the American Statistical Association released a statement recommending against the dichotomous interpretation of p-values, what has changed and what still needs to change? I will review the history of the tenacious grip of “statistical significance” on scientific thinking, aiming to clarify the underlying problems and summarise progress towards better practice, while suggesting a connection between dichotomania and a perception of statistical methods as ritualised procedures that give the illusion of answers to poorly specified questions.

Presenter

John Carlin is Professor Emeritus in biostatistics at the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, where he was Head of the Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit for 20 years until early 2022. John is recognised for his leadership in biostatistics and in a wide range of clinical and population health research. His career has featured extensive collaborative engagement in clinical trials and observational studies in many areas of child and adolescent health research, along with methodological research on topics including methods for handling missing data, causal inference and problems in the use of statistical methods. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2018.

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