Basic antidepressant research: a brief assay on how to justify your alpha

Abstract

Antidepressant research seems under risk of bias and poor reproducibility. Recent debates brought the use of the p values in hypothesis testing to the center of a reproducibility crisis. In basic biomedicine, the use of p values has been justified by tradition instead of reasoning. Here, a biomedical researcher commented concerns with the traditional use of the p values in basic antidepressant research and discussed the missing pieces limiting the plausible justifications to their use in the field.