Should Significance Tests be Banned? Introduction to a Special Section Exploring the Pros and Cons

Abstract

Significance testing of null hypotheses is the standard epistemological method for advancing scientific knowledge in psychology, even though it has drawbacks and it leads to common inferential mistakes These mistakes include accepting the null hypothesis when it fails to be rejected, automatically interpreting rejected null hypotheses as theoretically meaningful, and failing to consider the likelihood of Type II errors Although these mistakes have been discussed repeatedly for decades, there is no evidence that the academic discussion has had an impact A group of methodologists is proposing a new approach simply ban significance tests in psychology journals The impact of a similar ban in public-health and epidemiology journals is reported