Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Statistical Significance in Biology: Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient for Hypothesis Acceptance

  • Published:
Biological Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Amsterdamska O (2005) Demarcating epidemiology. Science, Technology, and Human Values 30: 17–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailar JC, Mosteller F (1992) Guidelines for statistical reporting in articles of medical journals. In: Medical Uses of Statistics, 2nd ed. (Bailar JC, Mosteller F, eds), 313–332. Waltham, MA: Massachusetts Medical Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes D, Bero L (1998) Why review articles on the health effects of passive smoking reach different conclusions. Journal of the American Medical Association 279: 1566–1570.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett KA, Funk CL, Macrina FL (2005) Awareness of publication guidelines and the responsible conduct of research. Accountability in Research 12: 193–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Breslow N (2003) Are statistical contributions to medicine undervalued? Biometrics 59: 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buchanan A, Weiss K, Fullerton S (2006) Dissecting complex disease. International Journal of Epidemiology 35: 562–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buhl-Mortensen L, Welin S (1998) The precautionary principle and the significance of non-significant results. Science and Engineering Ethics 4: 393–504.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burney L (1959) Smoking and lung cancer. Journal of the American Medical Association 171: 1829–1836.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng C, Pounds S, Boyett J, Pei D, Kuo M-L, Roussel M (2004) Statistical significance threshold criteria for analysis of microarray gene expression data. Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology 3, Article 36. Available at http://www.bepress.com/sagmb/vol3/iss1/art36/

  • Clouser K (1985) Approaching the logic of diagnosis. In: Logic of Discovery and Diagnosis in Medicine (Schaffner KF, ed), 35–55. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connor EF, Simberloff D (1979). The assembly of species communities. Ecology 60: 1132–1140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cranor C (2006) Toxic Torts. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cuzzort RP, Vrettos JS (1996). The Elementary Forms of Statistical Reason. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean BB, Aquilar D, Johnson LF, McGuigan JE, Orr WC, Fass R, Yan N, Morgenstern D, Dubois RW (2008) Night-time and daytime atypical manifestations of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease: Frequency, severity and impact on health-related quality of life. Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics 27: 327–337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberger MA, Blumenstein BA, Crawford ED, Miller G, McLeod DG, Loehrer PG (1998) Bilateral orchiectomy with or without flutamide for metastic prostate cancer. New England Journal of Medicine 339: 1036–1042.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board (2000) Comments on the use of data from the testing of human subjects, EPA-SAB-EC-00-017. Washington, DC: US EPA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fellers GM, Pope KL, Stead JE, Koo MS, Welsh HH (2008) Turning population trend monitoring into active conservation: Can we save the cascades frog (Rana cascadae) in the Lassen region of California? Herpetological Conservation and Biology 3: 28–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fidler F, Burgman M, Cumming G, Buttrose R, Thomason N (2006) Impact of criticism of null-hypothesis significance testing on statistical reporting practices in conservation biology. Conservation Biology 20: 1539–1544.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fleiss JL (1987) Significance tests have a role in epidemiologic research. American Journal of Public Health 77: 559–560.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freiman JA, Chalmers TC, Smith H Jr, Kuebler RR (1978) The importance of beta, the type-II error, and sample size in the design and interpretation of the randomized control trial. New England Journal of Medicine 299: 690–694.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gardenier JS, Resnik DB (2002) The misuse of statistics. Accountability in Research 9: 65–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman SN, Royall R (1988) Evidence and scientific research. American Journal of Public Health 78: 1568–1574.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenstein G (2003) Clinical versus statistical significance as they relate to the efficacy of periodontal therapy. Journal of the American Dental Association 134: 583–591.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hammond E (1955) Cause and effect. In: The Biologic Effects of Tobacco (Wynder E, ed), 193–194. Boston: Little, Brown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath D (1995) An Introduction to Experimental Design and Statistics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins WG (2001) Clinical versus statistical significance. Sportscience 5: 103. Available at http://sportsci.org/jour/0201/wghprob.htm

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins WG (2002) Probabilities of clinical or practical significance. Sportscience 6: 201. Available at http://sportsci.org/jour/0201/wghprob.htm

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson DH (1999) The insignificance of statistical significance testing. Journal of Wildlife Management 63: 763–772.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson DH (2004) What hypothesis tests are not. Behavioral Ecology 16: 325–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killoy WJ (2002) The clinical significance of local chemotherapies. Journal of Clinical Periodontology 2(Suppl.): 22–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koizumi K (2005) AAAS Report XXIX: R&D Trends and Special Analyses. Washington, DC: AAAS.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krimsky S (2003) Science in the Private Interest. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lavori PW, Louis TA, Bailar JC, Polansky M (1996) Designs for experiments. In: Medical Uses of Statistics, 2nd ed. (Bailar JC, Mosteller F, eds), 61–82. Waltham, MA: Massachusetts Medical Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little C (1961) Some phases of the problem of smoking and lung cancer. New England Journal of Medicine 264: 1241–1245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matthews J (1995) Quantification and the Quest for Medical Certainty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson K (1907) A First Study of the Statistics of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. London: Dulau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen S (2003) Effect sizes and “what if” analyses. Journal of Early Intervention 25: 310–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pittenger DJ (2001) Hypothesis testing as a moral choice. Ethics and Behavior 11: 151–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poole C (1987) Beyond the confidence interval. American Journal of Public Health 77: 195–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Resnik DB (2000) Statistics, ethics, and research: An agenda for education and reform. Accountability in Research 8: 163–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson DH, Wainer H (2002) On the past and future of null hypothesis significance testing. Journal of Wildlife Management 66: 263–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rothman KJ (1998) Should the mission of epidemiology include the eradication of poverty? Lancet 352: 810–813.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rothman KJ (2002) Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothman KJ, Greenland S (1998) Causation and causal inference. In: Modern Epidemiology, 2nd ed. (Rothman KJ, Greenland S, eds), 7–28. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott-Raven.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothman KJ, Johnson ES, Sugano DS (1999) Is flutamide effective in patients with bilateral orchiectomy? Lancet 353: 1184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Savitz DA, Tolo K, Poole C (1994) Statistical significance testing in the American Journal of Epidemiology 1970–1990. American Journal of Epidemiology 139: 1047–1052.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shelton RC, Keller MB, Gelenberg A, Dunner DL, Hirschfeld R, Thase ME, Russell J, Lydiard RB, Crits-Cristoph P, Gallop R, Todd L, Hellerstein D, Goodnick P, Keitner G, Stahl SM, Halbreich U (2001) Effectiveness of St. John’s wort in major depression. Journal of the American Medical Association 285: 1978–1986.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shrader-Frechette K (1991) Risk and Rationality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shrader-Frechette K (2007) Relative risk and methodological rules for causal inferences. Biological Theory 2: 332–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shrader-Frechette K, McCoy ED (1993) Method in Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Simberloff D (1970) The taxonomic diversity of island biotas. Evolution 24: 22–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simberloff D (1983) Competition theory, hypothesis-testing, and other community ecology buzzwords. American Naturalist 122: 626–635.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simberloff D (1990) Hypotheses, errors, and statistical assumptions. Herpetologica 46: 351–357.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon HA (1985) Artificial intelligence approaches to problem solving and clinical diagnosis. In: Logic of Discovery and Diagnosis in Medicine (Schaffner KF, ed), 80–88. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taubes G (1995) Epidemiology faces its limits. Science 269: 164–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson WD (1987) Statistical criteria in the interpretation of epidemiologic data. American Journal of Public Health 77: 191–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vineis P, Kriebel D (2006) Causal models in epidemiology: Past inheritance and genetic future. Environmental Health 5: 21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walton D (1999) The appeal to ignorance. Argumentation 13: 367–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wynder EL (1961) An appraisal of the smoking-lung-cancer issue. New England Journal of Medicine 264: 1235–1240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Biological Sciences and Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA

    Kristin Shrader-Frechette

Authors
  1. Kristin Shrader-Frechette
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristin Shrader-Frechette.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Shrader-Frechette, K. Statistical Significance in Biology: Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient for Hypothesis Acceptance. Biol Theory 3, 12–16 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2008.3.1.12

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2008.3.1.12

Keywords

Search

Navigation