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Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests

BACKGROUND: A recent paper found that terminal digits of statistical values in Nature deviated significantly from an equiprobable distribution, indicating errors or inconsistencies in rounding. This finding, as well as the discovery that a large percentage of p values were inconsistent with reported...

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Autor principal: Jeng, Monwhea
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1586023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16970820
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-6-45
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author Jeng, Monwhea
author_facet Jeng, Monwhea
author_sort Jeng, Monwhea
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A recent paper found that terminal digits of statistical values in Nature deviated significantly from an equiprobable distribution, indicating errors or inconsistencies in rounding. This finding, as well as the discovery that a large percentage of p values were inconsistent with reported test statistics, led to a great deal of concern in the popular press and scientific community. The findings ultimately led to new guidelines for all Nature Research Journals. METHODS: We checked the statistical analysis behind the original paper's tests of equiprobability. RESULTS: The original paper tested equiprobability with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test outside its regime of validity. Correct tests find no statistically significant deviations from equiprobability for the statistical values in Nature. CONCLUSION: Statistical tests should be used correctly.
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spelling pubmed-15860232006-10-02 Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests Jeng, Monwhea BMC Med Res Methodol Correspondence BACKGROUND: A recent paper found that terminal digits of statistical values in Nature deviated significantly from an equiprobable distribution, indicating errors or inconsistencies in rounding. This finding, as well as the discovery that a large percentage of p values were inconsistent with reported test statistics, led to a great deal of concern in the popular press and scientific community. The findings ultimately led to new guidelines for all Nature Research Journals. METHODS: We checked the statistical analysis behind the original paper's tests of equiprobability. RESULTS: The original paper tested equiprobability with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test outside its regime of validity. Correct tests find no statistically significant deviations from equiprobability for the statistical values in Nature. CONCLUSION: Statistical tests should be used correctly. BioMed Central 2006-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC1586023/ /pubmed/16970820 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-6-45 Text en Copyright © 2006 Jeng; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Correspondence
Jeng, Monwhea
Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title_full Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title_fullStr Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title_full_unstemmed Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title_short Error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
title_sort error in statistical tests of error in statistical tests
topic Correspondence
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1586023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16970820
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-6-45
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