February 15, at amphithatre #5: Ladislas Nalborczyk

Computational cognitive neuroscientist and author of the Barely significant blog : https://lnalborczyk.github.io/

Moving to a World beyond p<.05: Why and how?

Numerous authors have highlighted the limitations of the Null-Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) approach and the near exclusive reliance on p-values and significance testing. Despite being taught and used as the default paradigm for statistical inference, one of the main barriers to its correct use remains its complexity, often hidden by misleading intuitive interpretations, and the false belief that it would be somehow aligned with the falsificationist paradigm. In this talk, I will draw on the work of Paul Meehl to show how these misinterpretations and misconceptions have impeded theoretical progress in Psychological sciences (broadly speaking). I will then consider how we can confront the ongoing theory crisis through a coherent philosophy of science. Ultimately, this will require us to develop stronger theories and to bridge the gap between substantive theories and statistical hypotheses. I will illustrate how this can be implemented, at the statistical level, by a recently proposed "Bayesian workflow", which promotes an iterative model building, criticism, and comparison approach.

Computational cognitive neuroscientist and author of the Barely significant blog : https://lnalborczyk.github.io/