Skip to main content

The significance test controversy

Summary

The pre-designationist, anti-inductivist and operationalist tenor of Neyman-Pearson theory give that theory an obvious affinity to several currently influential philosophies of science, most particularly, the Popperian. In fact, one might fairly regard Neyman-Pearson theory as the statistical embodiment of Popperian methodology. The difficulties raised in this paper have, then, wider purport, and should serve as something of a touchstone for those who would construct a theory of evidence adequate to statistics without recourse to the notion of inductive probability.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Bibliography

  • Anscombe, F. J.: 1963, ‘Tests of Goodness of Fit’,J. Roy. Stat. Soc., Series B 25, 81–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birnbaum, Allan: 1969, ‘Concepts of Statistical Evidence’, inPhilosophy, Science and Method (ed. by S. Morgenbesser, P. Suppes and M. White), St. Martins Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, A. W. F.: 1972,Likelihood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, R. A.: 1935,The Design of Experiments, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, R. A.: 1956,Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giere, R. N.: ‘The Epistemological Roots of Scientific Knowledge’, forthcoming.

  • Hodges, J. L. and Lehmann, E. L.: 1954, ‘Testing the Approximate Validity of Statistical Hypotheses’,J. Roy. Stat. Soc., SeriesB 16, 261–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, M. G. and Stuart, A.: 1967,The Advanced Theory of Statistics, Hafner, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kullback, S.: 1959,Information Theory and Statistics, Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos, Imre: 1970, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, inCriticism and the Growth of Knowledge (ed. by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrove), Cambridge University Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann, E. L.: 1959,Testing Statistical Hypotheses, Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman, B.: 1971,Contemporary Problems in Statistics, Oxford University Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrison, D. F. and Henkel, R. E. (eds.): 1970:The Significance Test Controversy, Aldine, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, K.: 1934,Logik der Forschung, Vienna (English translation:The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York, 1959).

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, K.: 1963,Conjectures and Refutations, Basic Books, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage, L. J.: 1962, ‘Bayesian Statistics’, inDecision and Information Processes (ed. by R. E. Machol and P. Grey), Macmillan, New York.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Rosenkrantz, R.D. The significance test controversy. Synthese 26, 304–321 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00873267

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00873267

Keywords

  • Significance Test
  • Inductive Probability
  • Operationalist Tenor
  • Influential Philosophy
  • Statistical Embodiment