Commentary on “Accepting the null hypothesis”

Bayesian t tests for accepting and rejecting the null hypothesis.

Progress in science often comes from discovering invariances in relationships among variables; these invariances often correspond to null hypotheses. As is commonly known, it is not possible to state evidence for the null hypothesis in conventional significance testing. Here we highlight a Bayes factor alternative to the conventional t test that will allow researchers to express preference for ...

Bayes Factor 1 Running head: BAYES FACTOR A Bayes Factor Calculation for Accepting the Null Hypothesis

Progress in science often comes from discovering invariances in the relationship between variables. Invariances correspond to null hypotheses. As is commonly known, it is not possible to accumulate evidence for the null hypothesis in conventional significance testing. We highlight a Bayes factor alternative to the t-test for accumulating evidence for either the null or alternative hypotheses. T...

The Null Hypothesis

Page 2 of 8 2/26/09 In many sciences including for example, ecology, medicine, and psychology, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is the primary means by which the numbers comprising the data from some experiment are translated into conclusions about the question(s) that the experiment was designed to address. In this entry, I make three main points. First, I provide a brief descriptio...

Earthquake Prediction: The Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis in assessing earthquake predictions is often, loosely speaking, that the successful predictions are chance coincidences. To make this more precise requires specifying a chance model for the predictions and/or the seismicity. The null hypothesis tends to be rejected not only when the predictions have merit, but also when the chance model is inappropriate. In one standard appr...

Commentary: Psychological Science's Aversion to the Null