Academic papers are routinely incorrectly treating “non-significant” results as proof that experiments had no effect, according to new research.
A paper authored by researchers from the universities of Manchester, Oxford and Arkansas warns that there is a “widespread misinterpretation of non-significant results”, which may be killing off areas of interest in future research.
The study, published in PNAS, outlines that “non-significant results” in academic research are typically interpreted as meaning “no difference” or “no effect”, “despite long-standing recognition that this is a fundamental misinterpretation”, it says.
However, the interpretation remains “widespread”, featuring in about 50 per cent of research papers and conference presentations, the paper says.
This is one of the “most widespread and problematic misinterpretations in the scientific literature”, it explains, adding that a statistically non-significant result “shows only that the data do not provide strong evidence for a difference”.
