ABSTRACT
Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST 1) as applied by most researchers and journal editors can provide a very useful form of social control over researchers’
understandable tendency to “read too much” into their data, that is, to waste their readers’ and their own time providing elaborate explanations of effects whose sign (direction)2 in this sample may not match the sign of the corresponding population effect. So used, NHST becomes an essential tool in determining whether the available evidence (whether from a single study or from a metaanalysis) provides us with sufficient confidence in the sign of an effect to warrant foisting upon readers elaborate explanations of why the effect points in that particular direction. This is a valuable contribution which must be retained in any replacement system.
