AJP - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, Vol 245, Issue 3 299-R302, Copyright © 1983 by American Physiological Society
Abuse of statistical packages: the case of the general linear model
C. F. Hofacker
Since their introduction in the 1960s, packaged computer programs have
freed researchers from much drudgery and painstaking computational labor.
Before the distribution of these packages, many meaningful projects could
not be attempted, simply because the data analysis phase would have been
too labor intensive. However, the very ease of use of these packages can
lead to their abuse. In particular, performing all possible t tests among
numerous groups, calculating many correlations and circling the ones with P
values less than 0.05, and performing stepwise regression all can easily
lead to spurious statistical conclusions. The danger of these three
practices is illustrated with three simple computer runs using random data.
In each run statistically significant results were found for the random
data.
