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The vicious cycle that stalls statistical revolution

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 161–163 (2023)Cite this article

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Two publications have called for the redefinition of statistical significance as 0.005, or justification of the alpha. We argue that these papers expose a vicious cycle: scientists do not adopt recommendations because they are not standard, and they are not standard because few scientists adopt them. We call on journals and preregistration platforms to mandate alpha-level statements.

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Fig. 1: The number of papers published by the authors of the recommendation (‘authors’) and of papers that cited the recommendations (‘citations’) that implemented the recommendations in practice.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Lakens for his feedback on the project and comments on its first draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland

    Michał Białek

  2. School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Michal Misiak

  3. IDN Being Human Lab, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland

    Michal Misiak

  4. Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Martyna Dziekan

Authors
  1. Michał Białek
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  2. Michal Misiak
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  3. Martyna Dziekan
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Correspondence to Michał Białek.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Matthew Page for his contribution to the peer review of this work, and also thanks the authors of Benjamin et al. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z for their signed comments.

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Białek, M., Misiak, M. & Dziekan, M. The vicious cycle that stalls statistical revolution. Nat Hum Behav 7, 161–163 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01515-3

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