Reproducibility Crisis?—Diversity of Science and the p -value Problem in Ststistics

Abstract

The recent controversy over the use and abuse of p -values in statistical data analysis sheds a light on the epistemological diversity of scientific researches and the nature of science. Since the nineteenth century theoretical statisticians including Karl Pearson, Ronald A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon S.Pearson constructed the mathematical basis of modern statistics, for example, experimental design, sampling distributions, or hypothesis testing, etc. However, statistical reasoning as empirical inference is not necessarily limited to the Neyman-Pearson’s decision-making paradigm. Any kind of non-deductive inference—for example, abduction—also uses statistics as an exploratory tool for relative ranking among alternative hypotheses and models. We must understand not only the proper use of statistical methods and procedures but also the nature of each science to which statistics is applied.