Insights in Hypothesis Testing and Making Decisions in Biomedical Research

Open Cardiovasc Med J. 2016 Sep 30:10:196-200. doi: 10.2174/1874192401610010196. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

It is a fact that p values are commonly used for inference in biomedical and other social fields of research. Unfortunately, the role of p value is very often misused and misinterpreted; that is why it has been recommended the use of resampling methods, like the bootstrap method, to calculate the confidence interval, which provides more robust results for inference than does p value. In this review a discussion is made about the use of p values through hypothesis testing and its alternatives using resampling methods to develop confidence intervals of the tested statistic or effect measure.

Keywords: Biostatistics; Confidence intervals; Evidence based medicine; Resampling; p value.