Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

17
  • 24
    $\begingroup$ This is true, and worth pointing out, but it may also be worth mentioning that in this case the $p$-value should be really thought of only as an index of signal strength -- such small $p$-values (sometimes even if corrected for multiple comparisons) are so tiny that the probability that the NSA broke in and tampered with your data (and then brainwashed you so you can't remember) is far, far, higher than the nominal $p$-value. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 20:51
  • 10
    $\begingroup$ @BenBolker Indeed, while less probable than "the NSA tampered with your data", even events like "A cosmic ray flipped several important bits in your data" are far, far more likely than those probabilities. $\endgroup$ Commented May 20, 2014 at 3:41
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ In a 2015 neuroscience paper published in Nature, authors report $p<10^{-100}$ a couple of times when presenting correlation coefficients ($\rho\approx0.9$ and $n\sim 500$). Made me smile and remember your comments here, @Ben and Glen_b. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 15:43
  • 9
    $\begingroup$ Here is a new finding in my quest for the minimal p-value reported in the literature: another 2015 neuroscience paper published in Nature (from a group that has just got 2014 Nobel prize, by the way) reports $p=2.2\times 10^{-226}$. Wow. (The paper is actually still great.) Cc to @Glen_b. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 9, 2015 at 16:05
  • 10
    $\begingroup$ @amoeba Over in the Slate Star Codex comment section, Daniel Wells notes that science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6425/eaau1043 reports a p-value of 3.6e-2382 ("not a typo, two thousand", says Daniel), which beats yours by quite a margin! $\endgroup$ Commented May 20, 2019 at 10:15