Historical Origins of Statistical Testing Practices: The Treatment of Fisher versus Neyman-Pearson Views in Textbooks.

AbstractTextbook discussion of statistical testing is the topic of interest. Some 28 books published from 1910 to 1949, 19 books published from 1990 to 1992, plus five multiple-edition books were reviewed in terms of presentations of statistical testing. It was of interest to discover textbook coverage of the P-value (i.e., Fisher) and fixed-alpha (i.e., Neyman-Pearson) approaches to statistical testing. Also of interest in the review were some issues and concerns related to the practice and teaching of statistical testing: (a) levels of significance, (b) importance of effects, (c) statistical power and sample size, and (d) multiple testing. It is concluded that it is not statistical testing itself that is at fault; rather, some of the textbook presentation, teaching practices, and journal editorial reviewing may be questioned.

[1]  R. P. Carver.  The Case Against Statistical Significance Testing , 1978 .

[2]  Irving John Good,et al.  Some Logic and History of Hypothesis Testing , 1981 .

[3]  J. L. Hodges,et al.  Testing the Approximate Validity of Statistical Hypotheses , 1954 .

[4]  M. Oakes,et al.  Statistical Inference , 1990 .

[5]  D. Holt,et al.  Planning and Analysis of Observational Studies. , 1983 .

[6]  Stephen Spielman,et al.  The Logic of Tests of Significance , 1974, Philosophy of Science.

[7]  D. Salsburg.  Hypothesis versus significance testing for controlled clinical trials: a dialogue. , 1990, Statistics in medicine.

[8]  Ian Hacking.  Logic of Statistical Inference , 1965 .

[9]  R. Carlson.  The Logic of Tests of Significance , 1976, Philosophy of Science.

[10]  Deborah G. Mayo,et al.  TESTING STATISTICAL TESTING , 1981 .

[11]  J. Neyman.  Tests of statistical hypotheses and their use in studies of natural phenomena , 1976 .

[12]  Lawrence Sklar,et al.  Philosophical problems of statistical inference , 1981 .

[13]  David B. Pillemer,et al.  One- Versus Two-Tailed Hypothesis Tests in Contemporary Educational Research , 1991 .

[14]  Julian L. Simon,et al.  Resampling: A Tool for Everyday Statistical Work , 1991 .

[15]  Scott E. Maxwell,et al.  Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data , 1991 .

[16]  Beginning Statistics With Data Analysis , 1984 .

[17]  M. Moroney,et al.  Facts in figures , 1952 .

[18]  K. Ottenbacher.  The Significance of Power and the Power of Significance: Recommendations for Occupational Therapy Research , 1984 .

[19]  Carl J. Huberty,et al.  On Statistical Testing , 1987 .

[20]  Alan G. Sawyer,et al.  The Significance of Statistical Significance Tests in Marketing Research , 1983 .

[21]  R. Serlin.  Hypothesis testing, theory building, and the philosophy of science. , 1987 .

[22]  Louis Guttman,et al.  The Illogic of Statistical Inference for Cumulative Science , 1984 .

[23]  P. Meehl.  Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology. , 1978 .

[24]  R. Rosenthal,et al.  Statistical Procedures and the Justification of Knowledge in Psychological Science , 1989 .

[25]  M. Orey.  A Philosophical Critique of Null Hypothesis Testing. , 1989 .

[26]  Leonard J. Savage,et al.  The Foundations of Statistics Reconsidered , 1961 .

[27]  Shrikant I. Bangdiwala.  The teaching of the concepts of statistical tests of hypotheses to non-statisticians , 1989 .

[28]  H. J. Arnold.  Introduction to the Practice of Statistics , 1990 .

[29]  T. Porter.  The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 , 2020 .

[30]  W. Browner,et al.  Are all significant P values created equal? The analogy between diagnostic tests and clinical research. , 1987, JAMA.