retire statistical significance [follow-up]

[Here is a brief update sent by my coauthors Valentin, Sander, and Blake on events following the Nature comment “Retire Statistical Significance“.]

In the eight months since publication of the comment and of the special issue of The American Statistician, we are glad to see a rich discussion on internet blogs and in scholarly publications and popular media.Nature

One important indication of change is that since March numerous scientific journals have published editorials or revised their author guidelines. We have selected eight editorials that not only discuss statistics reform but give concrete new guidelines to authors. As you will see, the journals differ in how far they want to go with the reform (all but one of the following links are open access).

1) The New England Journal of Medicine, “New Guidelines for Statistical Reporting in the Journal”

2) Pediatric Anesthesia, “Embracing uncertainty: The days of statistical significance are numbered”

3) Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, “The Push to Move Health Care Science Beyond p < .05“

4) Brain and Neuroscience Advances, “Promoting and supporting credibility in neuroscience”

5) Journal of Wildlife Management, “Vexing Vocabulary in Submissions to the Journal of Wildlife Management”

6) Demographic Research, “P-values, theory, replicability, and rigour”

7) Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, “New Guidelines for Data Reporting and Statistical Analysis: Helping Authors With Transparency and Rigor in Research“

8) Significance, “The S word … and what to do about it”

Further, some of you took part in a survey by Tom Hardwicke and John Ioannidis that was published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation along with editorials by Andrew Gelman and Deborah Mayo.

We replied with a short commentary in that journal, “Statistical Significance Gives Bias a Free Pass“

And finally, joining with the American Statistical Association (ASA), the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) in the United States has also taken up the reform issue.