Most reasonably hypothesised effects cannot be exactly zero?

research methods study interpretation
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Tim, under the ‘anything else’ category, I’d add only Paul Meehl’s famous quote [1]:

Since the null hypothesis is quasi-always false, tables summarizing research in terms of patterns of “significant differences” are little more than complex, causally uninterpretable outcomes of statistical power functions.

  1. Meehl, Paul E. “Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychiatry 46 (1978): 806–34. http://www3.nd.edu/~ghaeffel/Meehl(1978).pdf
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