Statistical significance.....

Gelman and Stern published a paper that every social scientist employing statistical analysis should read. This is, of course, not the only paper that every social scientist employing statistical analysis should read, but it makes an important point that is almost certain to be lost on those who merely read the products of social scientists that use statistics. Ok, ok, so statistical significance is not the holy grail. That is not the point. The point is that differences in statistical significance often cannot be statistically distinguished from one another in statistical terms. And this should be troubling. Troubling above and beyond the other oft cited issues with statistical significance.