# Language for communicating frequentist results about treatment effects

**URL:** <https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/language-for-communicating-frequentist-results-about-treatment-effects/934>\
**Category:** study interpretation\
**Tags:** writing, confidence-interval, journal, rct, p-value\
**Created:** [November 13, 2018, 5:41pm UTC](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/language-for-communicating-frequentist-results-about-treatment-effects/934 "2018-11-13T17:41:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

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**Author:** ![davidcnorrismd](https://discourse.datamethods.org/user_avatar/discourse.datamethods.org/davidcnorrismd/32/3502_2.png) [@davidcnorrismd](https://discourse.datamethods.org/u/davidcnorrismd)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/language-for-communicating-frequentist-results-about-treatment-effects/934/36 "2018-11-17T15:25:13Z")

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> [@f2harrell](#):
>
> I only believe that a prior must be agreed upon, not “right”

I’d walk this back a even further. Whether the prior is “agreed upon” is far less important than that it constitutes _objective knowledge_ which is therefore [criticizable](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/examining-the-penumbra-theory-via-ninds-reanalysis/296/4). That is, an explicit prior enriches and enlarges the critical, scientific discussion we can have together. I suspect that one reason this convo is not moving toward resolution is that it has been framed through a question about alternative ways to make statements that have precisely the opposite character—i.e, statements about statistical ‘results’ that are meant to close off critical discourse!

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