scholarly journals Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. On the limited use of regression discontinuity analysis in higher education

Author(s):  
Chevy van Dorresteijn ◽  
Kees-Jan Kan ◽  
Niels Smits
Author(s):  
Alexander Ly ◽  
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

AbstractThe “Full Bayesian Significance Test e-value”, henceforth FBST ev, has received increasing attention across a range of disciplines including psychology. We show that the FBST ev leads to four problems: (1) the FBST ev cannot quantify evidence in favor of a null hypothesis and therefore also cannot discriminate “evidence of absence” from “absence of evidence”; (2) the FBST ev is susceptible to sampling to a foregone conclusion; (3) the FBST ev violates the principle of predictive irrelevance, such that it is affected by data that are equally likely to occur under the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis; (4) the FBST ev suffers from the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox in that it does not include a correction for selection. These problems also plague the frequentist p-value. We conclude that although the FBST ev may be an improvement over the p-value, it does not provide a reasonable measure of evidence against the null hypothesis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (145) ◽  
pp. 170033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele R. Schaeffer ◽  
Yannick Molgat-Seon ◽  
Christopher J. Ryerson ◽  
Jordan A. Guenette

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Frederik Gronau ◽  
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

A recent trial assessed the effectiveness of progesterone in preventing miscarriages. The number of live births was 74.7% (1513/2025) in the progesterone group and 72.5% (1459/2013) in the placebo group (p=.08). The authors concluded: "The incidence of adverse events did not differ significantly between the groups." This conclusion leaves unaddressed the degree to which the data undercut or support the progesterone hypothesis. To quantify such evidence we conducted Bayesian logistic regression. The results show that the data neither undercut nor support the progesterone hypothesis in compelling fashion.


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