P -curve accurately rejects evidence for homeopathic ultramolecular dilutions

PeerJ

article

Samuel Reisman¹  Mostafa Balboul¹  Tashzna Jones¹ 

[1] SUNY Downstate College of Medicine

关键词: p-curve;    p-value;    Publication bias;    Ultramolecular dilutions;    Homeopathy;    Statistics;    Evidential value;    Statistical significance;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6318

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundP-curve has been proposed as a statistical test of evidential value. The distributions of sets of statistically significant p-values are tested for skewness. P-curves of true effects are right-skewed, with greater density at lower p-values than higher p-values. Analyses of null effects result in a flat or left-skewed distribution. The accuracy of p-curve has not been tested using published research analyses of a null effect. We examined whether p-curve accurately rejects a set of significant p-values obtained for a nonexistent effect.MethodsHomeopathic ultramolecular dilutions are medicinal preparations with active substances diluted beyond Avogadro’s number. Such dilute mixtures are unlikely to contain a single molecule of an active substance. We tested whether p-curve accurately rejects the evidential value of significant results obtained in placebo-controlled clinical trials of homeopathic ultramolecular dilutions.ResultsP-curve accurately rejected the evidential value of significant results obtained in placebo-controlled clinical trials of ultramolecular dilutions. Robustness testing using alternate p-values yielded similar results.ConclusionOur results suggest that p-curve can accurately detect when sets of statistically significant results lack evidential value.

【 授权许可】

CC BY