Communications of the ACM
'Spell-Checker for Statistics' Reduces Errors in Psychology Literature
Several journals have added the statcheck tool to their peer-review processes.
Credit: The Project Twins
The statcheck online tool developed by Michèle Nuijten at Tilburg University in the Netherlands has reduced statistical errors in scientific papers.
Nuijten and Tilburg's Jelte Wicherts compared the P value error rate in two psychology journals before and after they implemented the tool, and in two publications that never used it. The researchers reviewed more than 7,000 papers published since 2003; papers published in Psychological Science and Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology had 4.5% fewer statistical errors after deploying statcheck, while articles in the non-statcheck-using Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology cut errors by only about 1%.
Nuijten credits the lower error rate among non-statcheck-using journals to greater awareness of issues concerning statistical significance during the review period, and to researchers using statcheck themselves prior to manuscript submission.
From Nature
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Abstracts Copyright © 2023 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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