Why do researchers choose to use the “P-Value” rule in data analysis?

Question

They say .014(the P-Value) is a “significant number”. Says who? Why? Isn’t any number “significant” if the distribution of data points is mostly around that area?

In: 4

Answer 1

For arbitrary reasons. Today, given everything we know about easy frequentist statistics traps and caveats to fall into, p-hacking, “researcher degrees of freedom”, the replication crisis, etc. I’d honestly give the advice of ignoring anything above 0.001, and being suspicious of anything above 0.0001. And if you’re in a position to write a paper, pre-register, and use something more reasonable like Bayesian statistics.