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1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Hacking Statistics

  • from Section 1 - Incentives, Context, and Capital
  • Mark P. Khurana, University of Copenhagen
  • Book:
    The Trajectory of Discovery
    Published online:
    06 April 2023
    Print publication:
    13 April 2023, pp 16-18

  • Summary

    The p-value is a statistical term used in medical research to suggests whether a result might be statistically significant or not. But despite the p-value being an "objective" measure of statistical probability, it has introduced a new concern in research, namely p-hacking. P-hacking is a type of bias where researchers collect or select data until nonsignificant results become significant. It also happens when researchers try a multitude of statistical analyses and cherry-pick those with significant results. Researchers do this because there is a strong incentive to publish significant results, since evidence suggests that journals prefer to publish significant results over non-significant ones. Chapter 2 is thus concerned with how p-hacking and other types of statistical hacking can negatively affect medical science.