Statistical Methods Helping and Hindering Environmental Science and Management

• Published in: Journal of agricultural, biological, and environmental statistics biological, and environmental statistics, 2002-09, Vol.7 (3), p.300-305
• Main Author: McBride, Graham B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied ecology; Applied statistics; Bayesian analysis; Biological and medical sciences; Confidence interval; Confidence intervals; Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife; Ecology; Environmental management; Environmental science; Environmental sciences; environmental statistics; Fisheries management; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; General aspects. Techniques; Marine ecology; Methods and techniques (sampling, tagging, trapping, modelling...); Null hypothesis; P values; Papers from a Conference Session on Diversity in Statistics in Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Statistics; Public health; Q1; Statistical methods; Statistical significance; Statistics; Sterility
• ISSN: 1085-7117; 1537-2693
• DOI: 10.1198/108571102258

Environmental scientists face the reality that many of their journals' editors and referees routinely insist that results be accompanied by statements of statistical significance, obtained from two-sided tests of point-null hypotheses. Many in these three groups of people appear only vaguely aware of the arbitrariness often invoked by this procedure and of the information sterility in a single p-value. The interpretation to be made of the failure of a test to attain such significance is not clear. For such reasons, some colleagues (and senior statisticians) have called current usage of the procedures into serious question. Some reasons for this dislocation and some of the more dramatic consequences for environmental science and management are presented. Interval and Bayesian approaches can offer remedies.