An investigation of the false discovery rate and the misinterpretation of p-values
Abstract
The following proposition is justified from several different points of view. If you use P = 0.05 to suggest that you have made a discovery, you will be wrong at least 30 percent of the time. If, as is often the case, experiments are under-powered, you will be wrong most of the time. It is concluded that if you wish to keep your false discovery rate below 5 percent, you need to use a 3-sigma rule, or to insist on P value below 0.001. And never use the word "significant".
- Publication:
-
Royal Society Open Science
- Pub Date:
- November 2014
- DOI:
- 10.1098/rsos.140216
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1407.5296
- Bibcode:
- 2014RSOS....140216C
- Keywords:
-
- Statistics - Applications;
- Physics - Data Analysis;
- Statistics and Probability;
- Quantitative Biology - Quantitative Methods
- E-Print:
- Small typo fixed again, at top of page 7 20 Nov