Category Archives: Bayes-Factors

The Fallacy of Placing Confidence in Bayesian Salvation

Richard D. Morey, Rink Hoekstra, Jeffrey N. Rouder, Michael D. Lee, and
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers (2016), henceforce psycho-Baysians, have a clear goal.  They want psychologists to change the way they analyze their data.

Although this goal motivates the flood of method articles by this group, the most direct attack on other statistical approaches is made in the article “The fallacy of placing confidence in confidence intervals.”   In this article, the authors claim that everybody, including textbook writers in statistics, misunderstood Neyman’s classic article on interval estimation.   What are the prior odds that after 80 years, a group of psychologists discover a fundamental flaw in the interpretation of confidence intervals (H1) versus a few psychologists are either unable or unwilling to understand Neyman’s article?

Underlying this quest for change in statistical practices lies the ultimate attribution error that Fisher’s p-values or Neyman-Pearsons significance testing with or without confidence intervals are responsible for the replication crisis in psychology (Wagenmakers et al., 2011).

This is an error because numerous articles have argued and demonstrated that questionable research practices undermine the credibility of the psychological literature.  The unprincipled use of p-values (undisclosed multiple testing), also called p-hacking, means that many statistically significant results have inflated error rates and the long-run probabilities of false positives are not 5%, as stated in each article, but could be 100% (Rosenthal, 1979; Sterling, 1959; Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011).

You will not find a single article by Psycho-Bayesians that will acknowledge the contribution of unprincipled use of p-values to the replication crisis. The reason is that they want to use the replication crisis as a vehicle to sell Bayesian statistics.

It is hard to believe that classic statistics are fundamentally flawed and misunderstood because they are used in industry to  produce SmartPhones and other technology that requires tight error control in mass production of technology. Nevertheless, this article claims that everybody misunderstood Neyman’s seminal article on confidence intervals.

The authors claim that Neyman wanted us to compute confidence intervals only before we collect data, but warned readers that confidence intervals provide no useful information after the data are collected.

Post-data assessments of probability have never been an advertised feature of CI theory. Neyman, for instance, said “Consider now the case when a sample…is already drawn and the [confidence interval] given…Can we say that in this particular case the probability of the true value of [the parameter] falling between [the limits] is equal to [X%]? The answer is obviously in the negative”

This is utter nonsense. Of course, Neyman was asking us to interpret confidence intervals after we collected data because we need a sample to compute confidence interval. It is hard to believe that this could have passed peer-review in a statistics journal and it is not clear who was qualified to review this paper for Psychonomic Bullshit Review.

The way the psycho-statisticians use Neyman’s quote is unscientific because they omit the context and the following statements.  In fact, Neyman was arguing against Bayesian attempts of estimate probabilities that can be applied to a single event.

It is important to notice that for this conclusion to be true, it is not necessary that the problem of estimation should be the same in all the cases. For instance, during a period of time the statistician may deal with a thousand problems of estimation and in each the parameter M  to be estimated and the probability law of the X’s may be different. As far as in each case the functions L and U are properly calculated and correspond to the same value of alpha, his steps (a), (b), and (c), though different in details of sampling and arithmetic, will have this in common—the probability of their resulting in a correct statement will be the same, alpha. Hence the frequency of actually correct statements will approach alpha. It will be noticed that in the above description the probability statements refer to the problems of estimation with which the statistician will be concerned in the future. In fact, I have repeatedly stated that the frequency of correct results tend to alpha.*

Consider now the case when a sample, S, is already drawn and the calculations have given, say, L = 1 and U = 2. Can we say that in this particular case the probability of the true value of M falling between 1 and 2 is equal to alpha? The answer is obviously in the negative.  

The parameter M is an unknown constant and no probability statement concerning its value may be made, that is except for the hypothetical and trivial ones P{1 < M < 2}) = 1 if 1 < M < 2) or 0 if either M < 1 or 2 < M) ,  which we have decided not to consider. 

The full quote makes it clear that Neyman is considering the problem of quantifying the probability that a population parameter is in a specific interval and dismisses it as trivial because it doesn’t solve the estimation problem.  We don’t even need observe data and compute a confidence interval.  The statement that a specific unknown number is between two other numbers (1 and 2) or not is either TRUE (P = 1) or FALSE (P = 0).  To imply that this trivial observation leads to the conclusion that we cannot make post-data  inferences based on confidence intervals is ridiculous.

Neyman continues.

The theoretical statistician [constructing a confidence interval] may be compared with the organizer of a game of chance in which the gambler has a certain range of possibilities to choose from while, whatever he actually chooses, the probability of his winning and thus the probability of the bank losing has permanently the same value, 1 – alpha. The choice of the gambler on what to bet, which is beyond the control of the bank, corresponds to the uncontrolled possibilities of M having this or that value. The case in which the bank wins the game corresponds to the correct statement of the actual value of M. In both cases the frequency of “ successes ” in a long series of future “ games ” is approximately known. On the other hand, if the owner of the bank, say, in the case of roulette, knows that in a particular game the ball has stopped at the sector No. 1, this information does not help him in any way to guess how the gamblers have betted. Similarly, once the boundaries of the interval are drawn and the values of L and U determined, the calculus of probability adopted here is helpless to provide answer to the question of what is the true value of M.

What Neyman was saying is that population parameters are unknowable and remain unknown even after researchers compute a confidence interval.  Moreover, the construction of a confidence interval doesn’t allow us to quantify the probability that an unknown value is within the constructed interval. This probability remains unspecified. Nevertheless, we can use the property of the long-run success rate of the method to place confidence in the belief that the unknown parameter is within the interval.  This is common sense. If we place bets in roulette or other random events, we rely on long-run frequencies of winnings to calculate our odds of winning in a specific game.

It is absurd to suggest that Neyman himself argued that confidence intervals provide no useful information after data are collected because the computation of a confidence interval requires a sample of data.  That is, while the width of a confidence interval can be determined a priori before data collection (e.g. in precision planning and power calculations),  the actual confidence interval can only be computed based on actual data because the sample statistic determines the location of the confidence interval.

Readers of this blog may face a dilemma. Why should they place confidence in another psycho-statistician?   The probability that I am right is 1, if I am right and 0 if I am wrong, but this doesn’t help readers to adjust their beliefs in confidence intervals.

The good news is that they can use prior information. Neyman is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in statistics.  His methods are taught in hundreds of text books, and statistical software programs compute confidence intervals. Major advances in statistics have been new ways to compute confidence intervals for complex statistical problems (e.g., confidence intervals for standardized coefficients in structural equation models; MPLUS; Muthen & Muthen).  What are the a priori chances that generations of statisticians misinterpreted Neyman and committed the fallacy of interpreting confidence intervals after data are obtained?

However, if readers need more evidence of psycho-statisticians deceptive practices, it is important to point out that they omitted Neyman’s criticism of their favored approach, namely Bayesian estimation.

The fallacy article gives the impression that Neyman’s (1936) approach to estimation is outdated and should be replaced with more modern, superior approaches like Bayesian credibility intervals.  For example, they cite Jeffrey’s (1961) theory of probability, which gives the impression that Jeffrey’s work followed Neyman’s work. However, an accurate representation of Neyman’s work reveals that Jeffrey’s work preceded Neyman’s work and that Neyman discussed some of the problems with Jeffrey’s approach in great detail.  Neyman’s critical article was even “communicated” by Jeffreys (these were different times where scientists had open conflict with honor and integrity and actually engaged in scientific debates).

Jeffrey.png

Given that Jeffrey’s approach was published just one year before Neyman’s (1936) article, Neyman’s article probably also offers the first thorough assessment of Jeffrey’s approach. Neyman first gives a thorough account of Jeffrey’s approach (those were the days).

Neyman.png

Neyman then offers his critique of Jeffrey’s approach.

It is known that, as far as we work with the conception of probability as adopted in
this paper, the above theoretically perfect solution may be applied in practice only
in quite exceptional cases, and this for two reasons. 

Importantly, he does not challenge the theory.  He only points out that the theory is not practical because it requires knowledge that is often not available.  That is, to estimate the probability that an unknown parameter is within a specific interval, we need to make prior assumptions about unknown parameters.   This is the problem that has plagued subjective Bayesians approaches.

Neyman then discusses Jeffrey’s approach to solving this problem.  I am not claiming that I am a statistical expert to decide whether Neyman or Jeffrey’s are right. Even statisticians have been unable to resolve these issues and I believe the consensus is that Bayesian credibility intervals and Neyman’s confidence intervals are both mathematically viable approaches to interval estimation with different strengths and weaknesses.

Neyman2.png

I am only trying to point out to unassuming readers of the fallacy article that both approaches are as old as statistics and that the presentation of the issue in this article is biased and violates my personal, and probably idealistic, standards of scientific integrity.   Using a selective quote by Neyman to dismiss confidence intervals and then to omit Neyman’s critic of Bayesian credibility intervals is deceptive and shows an unwillingness or inability to engage in open scientific examination of scientific arguments for and against different estimation methods.

It is sad and ironic that Wagenmakers’ efforts to convert psychologists into Bayesian statisticians is similar to Bem’s (2011) attempt to convert psychologists into believers in parapsychology; or at least in parapsychology as a respectable science. While Bem fudged data to show false empirical evidence, Wagenmakers is misrepresenting the way classic statistics works and ignoring the key problem of Bayesian statistics, namely that Bayesian inferences are contingent on prior assumptions that can be gamed to show what a researcher wants to show.  Wagenmaker used this flexibility in Bayesian statistics to suggest that Bem (2011) presented weak evidence for extra-sensory perception.  However, a rebuttle by Bem showed that Bayesian statistics also showed support for extra-sensory perception with different and more reasonable priors.  Thus, Wagenmakers et al. (2011) were simply wrong to suggest that Bayesian methods would have prevented Bem from providing strong evidence for an incredible phenomenon.

The problem with Bem’s article is not the way he “analyzed” the data. The problem is that Bem violated basic principles of science that are required to draw valid statistical inferences from data.  It would be a miracle if Bayesian methods that assume unbiased data could correct for data falsification.   The problem with Bem’s data has been revealed using statistical tools for the detection of bias (Francis, 2012; Schimmack, 2012, 2015, 2118). There has been no rebuttal from Bem and he admits to the use of practices that invalidate the published p-values.  So, the problem is not the use of p-values, confidence intervals, or Bayesian statistics.  The problem is abuse of statistical methods. There are few cases of abuse of Bayesian methods simply because they are used rarely. However, Bayesian statistics can be gamed without data fudging by specifying convenient priors and failing to inform readers about the effect of priors on results (Gronau et al., 2017).

In conclusion, it is not a fallacy to interpret confidence intervals as a method for interval estimation of unknown parameter estimates. It would be a fallacy to cite Morey et al.’s article as a valid criticism of confidence intervals.  This does not mean that Bayesian credibility intervals are bad or could not be better than confidence intervals. It only means that this article is so blatantly biased and dogmatic that it does not add to the understanding of Neyman’s or Jeffrey’s approach to interval estimation.

P.S.  More discussion of the article can be found on Gelman’s blog.

Andrew Gelman himself comments:

My current favorite (hypothetical) example is an epidemiology study of some small effect where the point estimate of the odds ratio is 3.0 with a 95% conf interval of [1.1, 8.2]. As a 95% confidence interval, this is fine (assuming the underlying assumptions regarding sampling, causal identification, etc. are valid). But if you slap on a flat prior you get a Bayes 95% posterior interval of [1.1, 8.2] which will not in general make sense, because real-world odds ratios are much more likely to be near 1.1 than to be near 8.2. In a practical sense, the uniform prior is causing big problems by introducing the possibility of these high values that are not realistic.

I have to admit some Schadenfreude when I see one Bayesian attacking another Bayesian for the use of an ill-informed prior.  While Bayesians are still fighting over the right priors, practical researchers may be better off to use statistical methods that do not require priors, like, hm, confidence intervals?

P.P.S.  Science requires trust.  At some point, we cannot check all assumptions. I trust Neyman, Cohen, and Muthen and Muthen’s confidence intervals in MPLUS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bayesian Meta-Analysis: The Wrong Way and The Right Way

Carlsson, R., Schimmack, U., Williams, D.R., & Bürkner, P. C. (in press). Bayesian Evidence Synthesis is no substitute for meta-analysis: a re-analysis of Scheibehenne, Jamil and Wagenmakers (2016). Psychological Science.

In short, we show that the reported Bayes-Factor of 36 in the original article is inflated by pooling across a heterogeneous set of studies, using a one-sided prior, and assuming a fixed effect size.  We present an alternative Bayesian multi-level approach that avoids the pitfalls of Bayesian Evidence Synthesis, and show that the original set of studies produced at best weak evidence for an effect of social norms on reusing of towels.

Subjective Bayesian T-Test Code

########################################################

rm(list=ls()) #will remove ALL objects

##############################################################
Bayes-Factor Calculations for T-tests
##############################################################

#Start of Settings

### Give a title for results output
Results.Title = ‘Normal(x,0,.5) N = 100 BS-Design, Obs.ES = 0′

### Criterion for Inference in Favor of H0, BF (H1/H0)
BF.crit.H0 = 1/3

### Criterion for Inference in Favor of H1
#set z.crit.H1 to Infinity to use Bayes-Factor, BF(H1/H0)
BF.crit.H1 = 3
z.crit.H1 = Inf

### Set Number of Groups
gr = 2

### Set Total Sample size
N = 100

### Set observed effect size
### for between-subject designs and one sample designs this is Cohen’s d
### for within-subject designs this is dz
obs.es = 0

### Set the mode of the alternative hypothesis
alt.mode = 0

### Set the variability of the alternative hypothesis
alt.var = .5

### Set the shape of the distribution of population effect sizes
alt.dist = 2  #1 = Cauchy; 2 = Normal

### Set the lower bound of population effect sizes
### Set to zero if there is zero probability to observe effects with the opposite sign
low = -3

### Set the upper bound of population effect sizes
### For example, set to 1, if you think effect sizes greater than 1 SD are unlikely
high = 3

### set the precision of density estimation (bigger takes longer)
precision = 100

### set the graphic resolution (higher resolution takes longer)
graphic.resolution = 20

### set limit for non-central t-values
nct.limit = 100

################################
# End of Settings
################################

# compute degrees of freedom
df = (N – gr)

# get range of population effect sizes
pop.es=seq(low,high,(1/precision))

# compute sampling error
se = gr/sqrt(N)

# limit population effect sizes based on non-central t-values
pop.es = pop.es[pop.es/se >= -nct.limit & pop.es/se <= nct.limit]

# function to get weights for Cauchy or Normal Distributions
get.weights=function(pop.es,alt.dist,p) {
if (alt.dist == 1) w = dcauchy(pop.es,alt.mode,alt.var)
if (alt.dist == 2) w = dnorm(pop.es,alt.mode,alt.var)
sum(w)
# get the scaling factor to scale weights to 1*precision
#scale = sum(w)/precision
# scale weights
#w = w / scale
return(w)
}

# get weights for population effect sizes
weights = get.weights(pop.es,alt.dist,precision)

#Plot Alternative Hypothesis
Title=”Alternative Hypothesis”
ymax=max(max(weights)*1.2,1)
plot(pop.es,weights,type=’l’,ylim=c(0,ymax),xlab=”Population Effect Size”,ylab=”Density”,main=Title,col=’blue’,lwd=3)
abline(v=0,col=’red’)

#create observations for plotting of prediction distributions
obs = seq(low,high,1/graphic.resolution)

# Get distribution for observed effect size assuming H1
H1.dist = as.numeric(lapply(obs, function(x) sum(dt(x/se,df,pop.es/se) * weights)/precision))

#Get Distribution for observed effect sizes assuming H0
H0.dist = dt(obs/se,df,0)

#Compute Bayes-Factors for Prediction Distribution of H0 and H1
BFs = H1.dist/H0.dist

#Compute z-scores (strength of evidence against H0)
z = qnorm(pt(obs/se,df,log.p=TRUE),log.p=TRUE)

# Compute H1 error rate rate
BFpos = BFs
BFpos[z < 0] = Inf
if (z.crit.H1 == Inf) z.crit.H1 = abs(z[which(abs(BFpos-BF.crit.H1) == min(abs(BFpos-BF.crit.H1)))])
ncz = qnorm(pt(pop.es/se,df,log.p=TRUE),log.p=TRUE)
weighted.power = sum(pnorm(abs(ncz),z.crit.H1)*weights)/sum(weights)
H1.error = 1-weighted.power

#Compute H0 Error Rate
z.crit.H0 = abs(z[which(abs(BFpos-BF.crit.H0) == min(abs(BFpos-BF.crit.H0)))])
H0.error = (1-pnorm(z.crit.H0))*2

# Get density for observed effect size assuming H0
Density.Obs.H0 = dt(obs.es,df,0)

# Get density for observed effect size assuming H1
Density.Obs.H1 = sum(dt(obs.es/se,df,pop.es/se) * weights)/precision

# Compute Bayes-Factor for observed effect size
BF.obs.es = Density.Obs.H1 / Density.Obs.H0

#Compute z-score for observed effect size
obs.z = qnorm(pt(obs.es/se,df,log.p=TRUE),log.p=TRUE)

#Show Results
ymax=max(H0.dist,H1.dist)*1.3
plot(type=’l’,z,H0.dist,ylim=c(0,ymax),xlab=”Strength of Evidence (z-value)”,ylab=”Density”,main=Results.Title,col=’black’,lwd=2)
par(new=TRUE)
plot(type=’l’,z,H1.dist,ylim=c(0,ymax),xlab=””,ylab=””,col=’blue’,lwd=2)
abline(v=obs.z,lty=2,lwd=2,col=’darkgreen’)
abline(v=-z.crit.H1,col=’blue’,lty=3)
abline(v=z.crit.H1,col=’blue’,lty=3)
abline(v=-z.crit.H0,col=’red’,lty=3)
abline(v=z.crit.H0,col=’red’,lty=3)
points(pch=19,c(obs.z,obs.z),c(Density.Obs.H0,Density.Obs.H1))
res = paste0(‘BF(H1/H0): ‘,format(round(BF.obs.es,3),nsmall=3))
text(min(z),ymax*.95,pos=4,res)
res = paste0(‘BF(H0/H1): ‘,format(round(1/BF.obs.es,3),nsmall=3))
text(min(z),ymax*.90,pos=4,res)
res = paste0(‘H1 Error Rate: ‘,format(round(H1.error,3),nsmall=3))
text(min(z),ymax*.80,pos=4,res)
res = paste0(‘H0 Error Rate: ‘,format(round(H0.error,3),nsmall=3))
text(min(z),ymax*.75,pos=4,res)

######################################################
### END OF Subjective Bayesian T-Test CODE
######################################################
### Thank you to Jeff Rouder for posting his code that got me started.
### http://jeffrouder.blogspot.ca/2016/01/what-priors-should-i-use-part-i.html

 

Wagenmakers’ Default Prior is Inconsistent with the Observed Results in Psychologial Research

Bayesian statistics is like all other statistics. A bunch of numbers are entered into a formula and the end result is another number.  The meaning of the number depends on the meaning of the numbers that enter the formula and the formulas that are used to transform them.

The input for a Bayesian inference is no different than the input for other statistical tests.  The input is information about an observed effect size and sampling error. The observed effect size is a function of the unknown population effect size and the unknown bias introduced by sampling error in a particular study.

Based on this information, frequentists compute p-values and some Bayesians compute a Bayes-Factor. The Bayes Factor expresses how compatible an observed test statistic (e.g., a t-value) is with one of two hypothesis. Typically, the observed t-value is compared to a distribution of t-values under the assumption that H0 is true (the population effect size is 0 and t-values are expected to follow a t-distribution centered over 0 and an alternative hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis assumes that the effect size is in a range from -infinity to infinity, which of course is true. To make this a workable alternative hypothesis, H1 assigns weights to these effect sizes. Effect sizes with bigger weights are assumed to be more likely than effect sizes with smaller weights. A weight of 0 would mean a priori that these effects cannot occur.

As Bayes-Factors depend on the weights attached to effect sizes, it is also important to realize that the support for H0 depends on the probability that the prior distribution was a reasonable distribution of probable effect sizes. It is always possible to get a Bayes-Factor that supports H0 with an unreasonable prior.  For example, an alternative hypothesis that assumes that an effect size is at least two standard deviations away from 0 will not be favored by data with an effect size of d = .5, and the BF will correctly favor H0 over this improbable alternative hypothesis.  This finding would not imply that the null-hypothesis is true. It only shows that the null-hypothesis is more compatible with the observed result than the alternative hypothesis. Thus, it is always necessary to specify and consider the nature of the alternative hypothesis to interpret Bayes-Factors.

Although the a priori probabilities of  H0 and H1 are both unknown, it is possible to test the plausibility of priors against actual data.  The reason is that observed effect sizes provide information about the plausible range of effect sizes. If most observed effect sizes are less than 1 standard deviation, it is not possible that most population effect sizes are greater than 1 standard deviation.  The reason is that sampling error is random and will lead to overestimation and underestimation of population effect sizes. Thus, if there were many population effect sizes greater than 1, one would also see many observed effect sizes greater than 1.

To my knowledge, proponents of Bayes-Factors have not attempted to validate their priors against actual data. This is especially problematic when priors are presented as defaults that require no further justification for a specification of H1.

In this post, I focus on Wagenmakers’ prior because Wagenmaker has been a prominent advocate of Bayes-Factors as an alternative approach to conventional null-hypothesis-significance testing.  Wagenmakers’ prior is a Cauchy distribution with a scaling factor of 1.  This scaling factor implies a 50% probability that effect sizes are larger than 1 standard deviation.  This prior was used to argue that Bem’s (2011) evidence for PSI was weak. It has also been used in many other articles to suggest that the data favor the null-hypothesis.  These articles fail to point out that the interpretation of Bayes-Factors in favor of H0 is only valid for Wagenmakers’ prior. A different prior could have produced different conclusions.  Thus, it is necessary to examine whether Wagenmakers’ prior is a plausible prior for psychological science.

Wagenmakers’ Prior and Replicability

A prior distribution of effect sizes makes assumption about population effect sizes. In combination with information about sample size, it is possible to compute non-centrality parameters, which are equivalent to the population effect size divided by sampling error.  For each non-centrality parameter it is possible to estimate power as the area under the curve of the non-central t-distribution on the right side of the criterion value that corresponds to alpha, typically .05 (two-tailed).   The assumed typical power is simply the weighted average of the power values for each non-centrality parameters.

Replicability is not identical to power for a set of studies with heterogeneous non-centrality parameters because studies with higher power are more likely to become significant. Thus, the set of studies that achieved significance has higher average power as the original set of studies.

Aside from power, the distribution of observed test statistics is also informative. Unlikely power which is bound at 1, the distribution of test-statistics is unlimited. Thus, unreasonable assumptions about the distribution of effect sizes are visible in a distribution of test statistics that does not match distributions of tests statistics in actual studies.  One problem is that test-statistics are not directly comparable for different sample sizes or statistical tests because non-central distributions vary as a function of degrees of freedom and the test being used (e.g., chi-square vs. t-test).  To solve this problem, it is possible to convert all test statistics into z-scores so that they are on a common metric.  In a heterogeneous set of studies, the sign of the effect provides no useful information because signs only have to be consistent in tests of the same population effect size. As a result, it is necessary to use absolute z-scores. These absolute z-scores can be interpreted as the strength of evidence against the null-hypothesis.

I used a sample size of N = 80 and assumed a between subject design. In this case, sampling error is defined as 2/sqrt(80) = .224.  A sample size of N = 80 is the median sample size in Psychological Science. It is also the total sample size that would be obtained in a 2 x 2 ANOVA with n = 20 per cell.  Power and replicability estimates would increase for within-subject designs and for studies with larger N. Between subject designs with smaller N would yield lower estimates.

I simulated effect sizes in the range from 0 to 4 standard deviations.  Effect sizes of 4 or larger are extremely rare. Excluding these extreme values means that power estimates underestimate power slightly, but the effect is negligible because Wagenmakers’ prior assigns low probabilities (weights) to these effect sizes.

For each possible effect size in the range from 0 to 4 (using a resolution of d = .001)  I computed the non-centrality parameter as d/se.  With N = 80, these non-centrality parameters define a non-central t-distribution with 78 degrees of freedom.

I computed the implied power to achieve a significant result with alpha = .05 (two-tailed) with the formula

power = pt(ncp,N-2,qt(1-.025,N-2))

The formula returns the area under the curve on the right side of the criterion value that corresponds to a two-tailed test with p = .05.

The mean of these power values is the average power of studies if all effect sizes were equally likely.  The value is 89%. This implies that in the long run, a random sample of studies drawn from this population of effect sizes is expected to produce 89% significant results.

However, Wagenmakers’ prior assumes that smaller effect sizes are more likely than larger effect sizes. Thus, it is necessary to compute the weighted average of power using Wagenmakes’ prior distribution as weights.  The weights were obtained using the density of a Cauchy distribution with a scaling factor of 1 for each effect size.

wagenmakers.weights = dcauchy(es,0,1)

The weighted average power was computed as the sum of the weighted power estimates divided by the sum of weights.  The weighted average power is 69%.  This estimate implies that Wagenmakers’ prior assumes that 69% of statistical tests produce a significant result, when the null-hypothesis is false.

Replicability is always higher than power because the subset of studies that produce a significant result has higher average power than the the full set of studies. Replicabilty for a set of studies with heterogeneous power is the sum of the squared power of individual studies divided by the sum of power.

Replicability = sum(power^2) / sum(power)

The unweighted estimate of replicabilty is 96%.   To obtain the replicability for Wagenmakers’ prior, the same weighting scheme as for power can be used for replicability.

Wagenmakers.Replicability = sum(weights * power^2) / sum(weights*power)

The formula shows that Wagenmakers’ prior implies a replicabilty of 89%.  We see that the weighting scheme has relatively little effect on the estimate of replicability because many of the studies with small effect sizes are expected to produce a non-significant result, whereas the large effect sizes often have power close to 1, which implies that they wil be significant in the original study and the replication study.

The success rate of replication studies is difficult to estimate. Cohen estimated that typical studies in psychology have 50% power to detect a medium effect size, d = .5.  This would imply that the actual success rate would be lower because in an unknown percentage of studies the null-hypothesis is true.  However, replicability would be higher because studies with higher power are more likely to be significant.  Given this uncertainty, I used a scenario with 50% replicability.  That is an unbiased sample of studies taken from psychological journals would produce 50% successful replications in an exact replication study of the original studies.  The following computations show the implications of a 50% success rate in replication studies for the proportion of hypothesis tests where the null hypothesis is true, p(H0).

The percentage of true null-hypothesis is a function of the success rate in replication study, weighted average power, and weighted replicability.

p(H0) = (weighted.average.power * (weighted.replicability – success.rate)) / (success.rate*.05 – success.rate*weighted.average.power – .05^2 + weighted.average.power*weighted.replicability)

To produce a success rate of 50% in replication studies with Wagenmakers’ prior when H1 is true (89% replicability), the percentage of true null-hypothesis has to be 92%.

The high percentage of true null-hypothesis (92%) also has implications for the implied false-positive rate (i.e., the percentage of significant results that are true null-hypothesis.

False Positive Rate =  (Type.1.Error *.05)  / (Type.1.Error * .05 +
(1-Type.1.Error) * Weighted.Average.Power)
For every 100 studies, there are 92 true null-hypothesis that produce 92*.05 = 4.6 false positive results. For the remaining 8 studies with a true effect, there are 8 * .67 = 5.4 true discoveries.  The false positive rate is 4.6 / (4.6 + 5.4) = 46%.  This means Wagenmakers prior assumes that a success rate of 50% in replication studies implies that nearly 50% of studies that replicate successfully are false-positives results that would not replicate in future replication studies.

Aside from these analytically derived predictions about power and replicability, Wagenmakers’ prior also makes predictions about the distribution of observed evidence in individual studies. As observed scores are influenced by sampling error, I used simulations to illustrate the effect of Wagenmakers’ prior on observed test statistics.

For the simulation I converted the non-central t-values into non-central z-scores and simulated sampling error with a standard normal distribution.  The simulation included 92% true null-hypotheses and 8% true H1 based on Wagenmaker’s prior.  As published results suffer from publication bias, I simulated publication bias by selecting only observed absolute z-scores greater than 1.96, which corresponds to the p < .05 (two-tailed) significance criterion.  The simulated data were submitted to a powergraph analysis that estimates power and replicability based on the distribution of absolute z-scores.

Figure 1 shows the results.   First, the estimation method slightly underestimated the actual replicability of 50% by 2 percentage points.  Despite this slight estimation error, the Figure accurately illustrates the implications of Wagenmakers’ prior for observed distributions of absolute z-scores.  The density function shows a steep decrease in the range of z-scores between 2 and 3, and a gentle slope for z-scores greater than 4 to 10 (values greater than 10 are not shown).

Powergraphs provide some information about the composition of the total density by dividing the total density into densities for power less than 20%, 20-50%, 50% to 85% and more than 85%. The red line (power < 20%) mostly determines the shape of the total density function for z-scores from 2 to 2.5, and most the remaining density is due to studies with more than 85% power starting with z-scores around 4.   Studies with power in the range between 20% and 85% contribute very little to the total density. Thus, the plot correctly reveals that Wagenmakers’ prior assumes that the roughly 50% average replicability is mostly due to studies with very low power (< 20%) and studies with very high power (> 85%).
Powergraph for Wagenmakers' Prior (N = 80)

Validation Study 1: Michael Nujiten’s Statcheck Data

There are a number of datasets that can be used to evaluate Wagenmakers’ prior. The first dataset is based on an automatic extraction of test statistics from psychological journals. I used Michael Nuijten’s dataset to ensure that I did not cheery-pick data and to allow other researchers to reproduce the results.

The main problem with automatically extracted test statistics is that the dataset does not distinguish between  theoretically important test statistics and other statistics, such as significance tests of manipulation checks.  It is also not possible to distinguish between between-subject and within-subject designs.  As a result, replicability estimates for this dataset will be higher than the simulation based on a between-subject design.

Powergraph for Michele Nuijten's StatCheck Data

 

Figure 2 shows all of the data, but only significant z-scores (z > 1.96) are used to estimate replicability and power. The most striking difference between Figure 1 and Figure 2 is the shape of the total density on the right side of the significance criterion.  In Figure 2 the slope is shallower. The difference is visible in the decomposition of the total density into densities for different power bands.  In Figure 1 most of the total density was accounted for by studies with less than 20% power and studies with more than 85% power.  In Figure 2, studies with power in the range between 20% and 85% account for the majority of studies with z-scores greater than 2.5 up to z-scores of 4.5.

The difference between Figure 1 and Figure 2 has direct implications for the interpretation of Bayes-Factors with t-values that correspond to z-scores in the range of just significant results. Given Wagenmakers’ prior, z-scores in this range mostly represent false-positive results. However, the real dataset suggests that some of these z-scores are the result of underpowered studies and publication bias. That is, in these studies the null-hypothesis is false, but the significant result will not replicate because these studies have low power.

Validation Study 2:  Open Science Collective Articles (Original Results)

The second dataset is based on the Open Science Collective (OSC) replication project.  The project aimed to replicate studies published in three major psychology journals in the year 2008.  The final number of articles that were selected for replication was 99. The project replicated one study per article, but articles often contained multiple studies.  I computed absolute z-scores for theoretically important tests from all studies of these 99 articles.  This analysis produced 294 test statistics that could be converted into absolute z-scores.

Powergraph for OSC Rep.Project Articles (all studies)
Figure 3 shows clear evidence of publication bias.  No sampling distribution can produce the steep increase in tests around the critical value for significance. This selection is not an artifact of my extraction, but an actual feature of published results in psychological journals (Sterling, 1959).

Given the small number of studies, the figure also contains bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals.  The 95% CI for the power estimate shows that the sample is too small to estimate power for all studies, including studies in the proverbial file drawer, based on the subset of studies that were published. However, the replicability estimate of 49% has a reasonably tight confidence interval ranging from 45% to 66%.

The shape of the density distribution in Figure 3 differs from the distribution in Figure 2 in two ways. Initially the slop is steeper in Figure 3, and there is less density in the tail with high z-scores.  Both aspects contribute to the lower estimate of replicability in Figure 3, suggesting that replicabilty of focal hypothesis tests is lower than replicabilty for all statistical tests.

Comparing Figure 3 and Figure 1 shows again that the powergraph based on Wagenmakers’ prior differs from the powergraph for real data. In this case, the discrepancy is even more notable because focal hypothesis tests rarely produce large z-scores (z > 6).

Validation Study 3:  Open Science Collective Articles (Replication Results)

At present, the only data that are somewhat representative of psychological research (at least of social and cognitive psychology) and that do not suffer from publication bias are the results from the replication studies of the OSC replication project.  Out of 97 significant results in original studies, 36 studies (37%) produced that produced a significant result in the original studies produced a significant result in the replication study.  After eliminating some replication studies (e.g., sample of replication study was considerably smaller), 88 studies remained.

Powergraph for OSC Replication Results (k = 88)Figure 4 shows the powergraph for the 88 studies. As there is no publication bias, estimates of power and replicability are based on non-significant and significant results.  Although the sample size is smaller, the estimate of power has a reasonably narrow confidence interval because the estimate includes non-significant results. Estimated power is only 31%. The 95% confidence interval includes the actual success rate of 40%, which shows that there is no evidence of publication bias.

A visual comparison of Figure 1 and Figure 4 shows again that real data diverge from the predicted pattern by Wagenmakers’ prior.  Real data show a greater contribution of power in the range between 20% and 85% to the total density, and large z-scores (z > 6) are relatively rare in real data.

Conclusion

Statisticians have noted that it is good practice to examine the assumptions underlying statistical tests. This blog post critically examines the assumptions underlying the use of Bayes-Factors with Wagenmakers’ prior.  The main finding is that Wagenmaker’s prior makes unreasonable assumptions about power, replicability, and the distribution of observed test-statistics with or without publication bias. The main problem from Wagenmakers’ prior is that it predicts too many statistical results with strong evidence against the null-hypothesis (z > 5, or the 5 sigma rule in physics).  To achieve reasonable predictions for success rates without publication bias (~50%), Wagenmakers’ prior has to assume that over 90% of statistical tests conducted in psychology test false hypothesis (i.e., predict an effect when H0 is true), and that the false-positive rate is close to 50%.

Implications

Bayesian statisticians have pointed out for a long time that the choice of a prior influences Bayes-Factors (Kass, 1993, p. 554).  It is therefore useful to carefully examine priors to assess the effect of priors on Bayesian inferences. Unreasonable priors will lead to unreasonable inferences.  This is also true for Wagenmakers’ prior.

The problem of using Bayes-Factors with Wagenmakers’ prior to test the null-hypothesis is apparent in a realistic scenario that assumes a moderate population effect size of d = .5 and a sample size of N = 80 in a between subject design. This study has a non-central t of 2.24 and 60% power to produce a significant result with p < .05, two-tailed.   I used R to simulate 10,000 test-statistics using the non-central t-distribution and then computed Bayes-Factors with Wagenmakers’ prior.

Figure 5 shows a histogram of log(BF). The log is being used because BF are ratios and have very skewed distributions.  The histogram shows that BF never favor the null-hypothesis with a BF of 10 in favor of H0 (1/10 in the histogram).  The reason is that even with Wagenmakers’ prior a sample size of N = 80 is too small to provide strong support for the null-hypothesis.  However, 21% of observed test statistics produce a Bayes-Factor less than 1/3, which is sometimes used as sufficient evidence to claim that the data support the null-hypothesis.  This means that the test has a 21% error rate to provide evidence for the null-hypothesis when the null-hypothesis is false.  A 21% error rate is 4 times larger than the 5% error rate in null-hypothesis significance testing. It is not clear why researchers should replace a statistical method with a 5% error rate for a false discovery of an effect with a 20% error rate of false discoveries of null effects.

Another 48% of the results produce Bayes-Factors that are considered inconclusive. This leaves 31% of results that favor H1 with a Bayes-Factor greater than 3, and only 17% of results produce a Bayes-Factor greater than 10.   This implies that even with the low standard of a BF > 3, the test has only 31% power to provide evidence for an effect that is present.

These results are not wrong because they correctly express the support that the observed data provide for H0 and H1.  The problem only occurs when the specification of H1 is ignored. Given Wagenmakers prior, it is much more likely that a t-value of 1 stems from the sampling distribution of H0 than from the sampling distribution of H1.  However, studies with 50% power when an effect is present are also much more likely to produce t-values of 1 than t-values of 6 or larger.   Thus, a different prior that is more consistent with the actual power of studies in psychology would produce different Bayes-Factors and reduce the percentage of false discoveries of null effects.  Thus, researchers who think Wagenmakers’ prior is not a realistic prior for their research domain should use a more suitable prior for their research domain.

HistogramBF

 

Counterarguments

Wagenmakers’ has ignored previous criticisms of his prior.  It is therefore not clear what counterarguments he would make.  Below, I raise some potential counterarguments that might be used to defend the use of Wagenmakers’ prior.

One counterargument could be that the prior is not very important because the influence of priors on Bayes-Factors decreases as sample sizes increase.  However, this argument ignores the fact that Bayes-Factors are often used to draw inferences from small samples. In addition, Kass (1993) pointed out that “a simple asymptotic analysis shows that even in large samples Bayes factors remain sensitive to the choice of prior” (p. 555).

Another counterargument could be that a bias in favor of H0 is desirable because it keeps the rate of false-positives low. The problem with this argument is that Bayesian statistics does not provide information about false-positive rates.  Moreover, the cost for reducing false-positives is an increase in the rate of false negatives; that is, either inconclusive results or false evidence for H0 when an effect is actually present.  Finally, the choice of the correct prior will minimize the overall amount of errors.  Thus, it should be desirable for researchers interested in Bayesian statistics to find the most appropriate priors in order to minimize the rate of false inferences.

A third counterargument could be that Wagenmakers’ prior expresses a state of maximum uncertainty, which can be considered a reasonable default when no data are available.  If one considers each study as a unique study, a default prior of maximum uncertainty would be a reasonable starting point.  In contrast, it may be questionable to treat a new study as a randomly drawn study from a sample of studies with different population effect sizes.  However, Wagenmakers’ prior does not express a state of maximum uncertainty and makes assumptions about the probability of observing very large effect sizes.  It does so without any justification for this expectation.  It therefore seems more reasonable to construct priors that are consistent with past studies and to evaluate priors against actual results of studies.

A fourth counterargument is that Bayes-Factors are superior because they can provide evidence for the null-hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.  However, this is not correct. Bayes-Factors only provide relative support for the null-hypothesis relative to a specific alternative hypothesis.  Researchers who are interested in testing the null-hypothesis can do so using parameter estimation with confidence or credibility intervals. If the interval falls within a specified region around zero, it is possible to affirm the null-hypothesis with a specified level of certainty that is determined by the precision of the study to estimate the population effect size.  Thus, it is not necessary to use Bayes-Factors to test the null-hypothesis.

In conclusion, Bayesian statistics and other statistics are not right or wrong. They combine assumptions and data to draw inferences.  Untrustworthy data and wrong assumptions can lead to false conclusions.  It is therefore important to test the integrity of data (e.g., presence of publication bias) and to examine assumptions.  The uncritical use of Bayes-Factors with default assumptions is not good scientific practice and can lead to false conclusions just like the uncritical use of p-values can lead to false conclusions.

Why Psychologists Should Not Change The Way They Analyze Their Data: The Devil is in the Default Prior

The scientific method is well-equipped to demonstrate regularities in nature as well as human behaviors. It works by repeating a scientific procedure (experiment or natural observation) many times. In the absence of a regular pattern, the empirical data will follow a random pattern. When a systematic pattern exists, the data will deviate from the pattern predicted by randomness. The deviation of an observed empirical result from a predicted random pattern is often quantified as a probability (p-value). The p-value itself is based on the ratio of the observed deviation from zero (effect size) and the amount of random error. As the signal-to-noise ratio increases, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the observed effect is simply a random event. As a result, it becomes more likely that an effect is present. The amount of noise in a set of observations can be reduced by repeating the scientific procedure many times. As the number of observations increases, noise decreases. For strong effects (large deviations from randomness), a relative small number of observations can be sufficient to produce extremely low p-values. However, for small effects it may require rather large samples to obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio that produces a very small p-value. This makes it difficult to test the null-hypothesis that there is no effect. The reason is that it is always possible to find an effect size that is so small that the noise in a study is too large to determine whether a small effect is present or whether there is really no effect at all; that is, the effect size is exactly zero (1 / infinity).

The problem that it is impossible to demonstrate scientifically that an effect is absent may explain why the scientific method has been unable to resolve conflicting views around controversial topics such as the existence of parapsychological phenomena or homeopathic medicine that lack a scientific explanation, but are believed by many to be real phenomena. The scientific method could show that these phenomena are real, if they were real, but the lack of evidence for these effects cannot rule out the possibility that a small effect may exist. In this post, I explore two statistical solutions to the problem of demonstrating that an effect is absent.

Neyman-Pearson Significance Testing (NPST)

The first solution is to follow Neyman-Pearsons’s orthodox significance test. NPST differs from the widely practiced null-hypothesis significance test (NHST) in that non-significant results are interpreted as evidence for the null-hypothesis. Thus, using the standard criterion of p = .05 as the criterion for significance, a p-value below .05 is used to reject the null-hypothesis and to infer that an effect is present. Importantly, if the p-value is greater than .05 the results are used to accept the null-hypothesis; that is, the hypothesis that there is no effect is true. As all statistical inferences, it is possible that the evidence is misleading and leads to the wrong conclusion. NPST distinguishes between two types or errors that are called type-I and type-II error. Type-I errors are errors when a p-value is below the criterion value (p < .05), but the null-hypothesis is actually true; that is there is no effect and the observed effect size was caused by a rare random event. Type-II errors are made when the null-hypothesis is accepted, but the null-hypothesis is false; there actually is an effect. The probability of making a type-II error depends on the size of the effect and the amount of noise in the data. Strong effects are unlikely to produce a type-II error even with noise data. Studies with very little noise are also unlikely to produce type-II errors because even small effects can still produce a high signal-to-noise ratio and significant results (p-values below the criterion value).   Type-II error rates can be very high in studies with small effects and a large amount of noise. NPST makes it possible to quantify the probability of a type-II error for a given effect size. By investing a large amount of resources, it is possible to reduce noise to a level that is sufficient to have a very low type-II error probability for very small effect sizes. The only requirement for using NPST to provide evidence for the null-hypothesis is to determine a margin of error that is considered acceptable. For example, it may be acceptable to infer that a weight-loss-medication has no effect on weight if weight loss is less than 1 pound over a one month period. It is impossible to demonstrate that the medication has absolutely no effect, but it is possible to demonstrate with high probability that the effect is unlikely to be more than 1 pound.

Bayes-Factors

The main difference between Bayes-Factors and NPST is that NPST yields type-II error rates for an a priori effect size. In contrast, Bayes-Factors do not postulate a single effect size, but use an a priori distribution of effect sizes. Bayes-Factors are based on the probability that the observed effect sizes is based on a true effect size of zero relative to the probability that the observed effect size was based on a true effect size within a range of a priori effect sizes. Bayes-Factors are the ratio of the probabilities for the two hypotheses. It is arbitrary, which hypothesis is in the numerator and which hypothesis is in the denominator. When the null-hypothesis is placed in the numerator and the alternative hypothesis is placed in the denominator, Bayes-Factors (BF01) decrease towards zero the more the data suggest that an effect is present. In this way, Bayes-Factors behave very much like p-values. As the signal-to-noise ratio increases, p-values and BF01 decrease.

There are two practical problems in the use of Bayes-Factors. One problem is that Bayes-Factors depend on the specification of the a priori distribution of effect sizes. It is therefore important that results can never be interpreted as evidence for the null-hypothesis or against the null-hypothesis per se. A Bayes-Factor that favors the null-hypothesis in the comparison to one a priori distribution can favor the alternative hypothesis for another a priori distribution of effect sizes. This makes Bayes-Factors impractical for the purpose of demonstrating that an effect does not exist (e.g., a drug does not have positive treatment effects). The second problem is that Bayes-Factors only provide quantitative information about the two hypotheses. Without a clear criterion value, Bayes-Factors cannot be used to claim that an effect is present or absent.

Selecting a Criterion Value for Bayes-Factors

A number of criterion values seem plausible. NPST always leads to a decision depending on the criterion for p-values. An equivalent criterion value for Bayes-Factors would be a value of 1. Values greater than 1 favor the null-hypothesis over the alternative, whereas values less than 1 favor the alternative hypothesis. This criterion avoids inconclusive results. The disadvantage with this criterion is that Bayes-Factors close to 1 are very variable and prone to have high type-I and type-II error rates. To avoid this problem, it is possible to use more stringent criterion values. This reduces the type-I and type-II error rates, but it also increases the rate of inconclusive results in noisy studies. Bayes-Factors of 3 (a 3 to 1 ratio in favor of the null over an alternative hypothesis) are often used to suggest that the data favor one hypothesis over another, and Bayes-Factors of 10 or more are often considered strong support. One problem with these criterion values is that there have been no systematic studies of the type-I and type-II error rates for these criterion values. Moreover, there have been no systematic sensitivity studies; that is, the ability of studies to reach a criterion value for different signal-to-noise ratios.

Wagenmakers et al. (2011) argued that p-values can be misleading and that Bayes-Factors provide more meaningful results. To make their point, they investigated Bem’s (2011) controversial studies that seemed to demonstrate the ability to anticipate random events in the future (time –reversed causality). Using a significance criterion of p < .05 (one-tailed), 9 out of 10 studies showed evidence of an effect. For example, in Study 1, participants were able to predict the location of erotic pictures 54% of the time, even before a computer randomly generated the location of the picture. Using a more liberal type-I error rate of p < .10 (one-tailed), all 10 studies produced evidence for extrasensory perception.

Wagenmakers et al. (2011) re-examined the data with Bayes-Factors. They used a Bayes-Factor of 3 as the criterion value. Using this value, six tests were inconclusive, three provided substantial support for the null-hypothesis (the observed effect was just due to noise in the data) and only one test produced substantial support for ESP.   The most important point here is that the authors interpreted their results using a Bayes-Factor of 3 as criterion. If they had used a Bayes-Factor of 10 as criterion, they would have concluded that all studies were inconclusive. If they had used a Bayes-Factor of 1 as criterion, they would have concluded that 6 studies favored the null-hypothesis and 4 studies favored the presence of an effect.

Matzke, Nieuwenhuis, van Rijn, Slagter, van der Molen, and Wagenmakers used Bayes-Factors in a design with optional stopping. They agreed to stop data-collection when the Bayes-Factor reached a criterion value of 10 in favor of either hypothesis. The implementation of a decision to stop data collection suggests that a Bayes-Factor of 10 was considered decisive. One reason for this stopping rule would be that it is extremely unlikely that a Bayes-Factor might swing to favoring the alternative hypothesis if more data were collected. By the same logic, a Bayes-Factor of 10 that favors the presence of an effect in an ESP effect would suggest that further data collection would be unnecessary because the evidence already shows rather strong evidence that an effect is present.

Tan, Dienes, Jansari, and Goh, (2014) report a Bayes-Factor of 11.67 and interpret as being “greater than 3 and strong evidence for the alternative over the null” (p. 19). Armstrong and Dienes (2013) report a Bayes-Factor of 0.87 and state that no conclusion follows from this finding because the Bayes-Factor is between 3 and 1/3. This statement implies that Bayes-Factors that meet the criterion value are conclusive.

In sum, a criterion-value of 3 has often been used to interpret empirical data and a criterion of 10 has been used as strong evidence in favor of an effect or in favor of the null-hypothesis.

Meta-Analysis of Multiple Studies

As sample sizes increase, noise decreases and the signal-to-noise ratio increases. Rather than increasing the sample size of a single study, it is also possible to conduct multiple smaller studies and to combine the evidence of studies in a meta-analysis. The effect is the same. A meta-analysis based on several original studies reduces random noise in the data and can produce higher signal-to-noise ratios when an effect is present. On the flip side, a low signal-to-noise ratio in a meta-analysis implies that the signal is very weak and that the true effect size is close to zero. As the evidence in a meta-analysis is based on the aggregation of several smaller studies, the results should be consistent. That is, the effect size in the smaller studies and the meta-analysis is the same. The only difference is that aggregation of studies reduces noise, which increases the signal-to-noise ratio.   A meta-analysis therefore can highlight the problem of interpreting a low signal-to-noise ratio (BF10 < 1, p > .05) in small studies as evidence for the null-hypothesis. In NPST this result would be flagged as not trustworthy because the type-II error probability is high. For example, a non-significant result with a type-II error of 80% (20% power) is not particularly interesting and nobody would want to accept the null-hypothesis with such a high error probability. Holding the effect size constant, the type-II error probability decreases as the number of studies in a meta-analysis increases and it becomes increasingly more probable that the true effect size is below the value that was considered necessary to demonstrate an effect. Similarly, Bayes-Factors can be misleading in small samples and they become more conclusive as more information becomes available.

A simple demonstration of the influence of sample size on Bayes-Factors comes from Rouder and Morey (2011). The authors point out that it is not possible to combine Bayes-Factors by multiplying Bayes-Factors of individual studies. To address this problem, they created a new method to combine Bayes-Factors. This Bayesian meta-analysis is implemented in the Bayes-Factor r-package. Rouder and Morey (2011) applied their method to a subset of Bem’s data. However, they did not use it to examine the combined Bayes-Factor for the 10 studies that Wagenmakers et al. (2011) examined individually. I submitted the t-values and sample sizes of all 10 studies to a Bayesian meta-analysis and obtained a strong Bayes-Factor in favor of an effect, BF10 = 16e7, that is, 16 million to 1 in favor of ESP. Thus, a meta-analysis of all 10 studies strongly suggests that Bem’s data are not random.

Another way to meta-analyze Bem’s 10 studies is to compute a Bayes-Factor based on the finding that 9 out of 10 studies produced a significant result. The p-value for this outcome under the null-hypothesis is extremely small; 1.86e-11, that is p < .00000000002. It is also possible to compute a Bayes-Factor for the binomial probability of 9 out of 10 successes with a probability of 5% to have a success under the null-hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis can be specified in several ways, but one common option is to use a uniform distribution from 0 to 1 (beta(1,1). This distribution allows for the power of a study to range anywhere from 0 to 1 and makes no a priori assumptions about the true power of Bem’s studies. The Bayes-Factor strongly favors the presence of an effect, BF10 = 20e9. In sum, a meta-analysis of Bem’s 10 studies strongly supports the presence of an effect and rejects the null-hypothesis.

The meta-analytic results raise concerns about the validity of Wagenmakers et al.’s (2011) claim that Bem presented weak evidence and that p-values misleading information. Instead, Wagenmakers et al.’s Bayes-Factors are misleading and fail to detect an effect that is clearly present in the data.

The Devil is in the Priors: What is the Alternative Hypothesis in the Default Bayesian t-test?

Wagenmakers et al. (2011) computed Bayes-Factors using the default Bayesian t-test. The default Bayesian t-test uses a Cauchy distribution centered over zero as the alternative hypothesis. The Cauchy distribution has a scaling factor. Wagenmakers et al. (2011) used a default scaling factor of 1. Since then, the default scaling parameter has changed to .707.Figure 1 illustrates Cauchi distributions with scaling factors .2, .5, .707, and 1.

WagF1

The black line shows the Cauchy distribution with a scaling factor of d = .2. A scaling factor of d = .2 implies that 50% of the density of the distribution is in the interval between d = -.2 and d = .2. As the Cauchy-distribution is centered over 0, this specification also implies that the null-hypothesis is considered much more likely than many other effect sizes, but it gives equal weight to effect sizes below and above an absolute value of d = .2.   As the scaling factor increases, the distribution gets wider. With a scaling factor of 1, 50% of the density distribution is within the range from -1 to 1 and 50% covers effect sizes greater than 1.   The choice of the scaling parameter has predictable consequences on the Bayes-Factor. As long as the true effect size is more extreme than the scaling parameter, Bayes-Factors will favor the alternative hypothesis and Bayes-Factors will increase towards infinity as sampling error decreases. However, for true effect sizes that are below the scaling parameter, Bayes-Factors may initially favor the null-hypothesis because the alternative hypothesis includes effect sizes that are more extreme than the alternative hypothesis. As sample sizes increase, the Bayes-Factor will change from favoring the null-hypothesis to favoring the alternative hypothesis.   This can explain why Wagenmakers et al. (2011) found no support for ESP when Bem’s studies were examined individually, but a meta-analysis of all studies shows strong evidence in favor of an effect.

The effect of the scaling parameter on Bayes-Factors is illustrated in the following Figure.

WagF2

The straight lines show Bayes-Factors (y-axis) as a function of sample size for a scaling parameter of 1. The black line shows Bayes-Factors favoring an effect of d = .2 when the effect size is actually d = .2 (BF10) and the red line shows Bayes-Factor favoring the null-hypothesis when the effect size is actually 0. The green line implies a criterion value of 3 to suggest “substantial” support for either hypothesis (Wagenmakers et al., 2011). The figure shows that Bem’s sample sizes of 50 to 150 participants could never produce substantial evidence for an effect when the observed effect size is d = .2. In contrast, an effect size of 0 would produce provide substantial support for the null-hypothesis. Of course, actual effect sizes in samples will deviated from these hypothetical values, but sampling error will average out. Thus, for studies that occasionally show support for an effect there will also be studies that underestimate support for an effect. The dotted lines illustrate how the choice of the scaling factor influences Bayes-Factors. With a scaling factor of d = .2, Bayes-Factors would never favor the null-hypothesis. They would also not support the alternative hypothesis in studies with less than 150 participants and even in these studies the Bayes-Factor is likely to be just above 3.

Figure 2 explains why Wagenmakers et al.’s (2011) did mainly find inconclusive results. On the one hand, the effect size was typically around d = .2. As a result, the Bayes-Factor did not provide clear support for the null-hypothesis. On the other hand, an effect size of d = .2 in studies with 80% power is insufficient to produce Bayes-Factors favoring the presence of an effect, when the alternative hypothesis is specified as a Cauchy distribution centered over 0. This is especially true when the scaling parameter is larger, but even for a seemingly small scaling parameter Bayes-Factors would not provide strong support for a small effect. The reason is that the alternative hypothesis is centered over 0. As a result, it is difficult to distinguish the null-hypothesis from the alternative hypothesis.

A True Alternative Hypothesis: Centering the Prior Distribution over a Non-Null Effect Size

A Cauchy-distribution is just one possible way to formulate an alternative hypothesis. It is also possible to formulate alternative hypothesis as (a) a uniform distribution of effect sizes in a fixed range (e.g., the effect size is probably small to moderate, d = .2 to .5) or as a normal distribution centered over an effect size (e.g., the effect is most likely to be small, but there is some uncertainty about how small, d = 2 +/- SD = .1) (Dienes, 2014).

Dienes provided an online app to compute Bayes-Factors for these prior distributions. I used the posted r-code by John Christie to create the following figure. It shows Bayes-Factors for three a priori uniform distributions. Solid lines show Bayes-Factors for effect sizes in the range from 0 to 1. Dotted lines show effect sizes in the range from 0 to .5. The dot-line pattern shows Bayes-Factors for effect sizes in the range from .1 to .3. The most noteworthy observation is that prior distributions that are not centered over zero can actually provide evidence for a small effect with Bem’s (2011) sample sizes. The second observation is that these priors can also favor the null-hypothesis when the true effect size is zero (red lines). Bayes-Factors become more conclusive for more precisely formulate alternative hypotheses. The strongest evidence is obtained by contrasting the null-hypothesis with a narrow interval of possible effect sizes in the .1 to .3 range. The reason is that in this comparison weak effects below .1 clearly favor the null-hypothesis. For an expected effect size of d = .2, a range of values from 0 to .5 seems reasonable and can produce Bayes-Factors that exceed a value of 3 in studies with 100 to 200 participants. Thus, this is a reasonable prior for Bem’s studies.

WagF3

It is also possible to formulate alternative hypotheses with normal distributions around an a priori effect size. Dienes recommends setting the mean to 0 and to set the standard deviation of the expected effect size. The problem with this approach is again that the alternative hypothesis is centered over 0 (in a two-tailed test).   Moreover, the true effect size is not known. Like the scaling factor in the Cauchy distribution, using a higher value leads to a wider spread of alternative effect sizes and makes it harder to show evidence for small effects and easier to find evidence in favor of H0.   However, the r-code also allows specifying non-null means for the alternative hypothesis.   The next figure shows Bayes-Factors for three normally distributed alternative hypotheses. The solid lines show Bayes-Factors with mean = 0 and SD = .2. The dotted line shows Bayes-Factors for d = .2 (a small effect and the effect predicted by Bem) and a relatively wide standard deviation of .5. This means 95% of effect sizes are in the range from -.8 to 1.2. The broken (dot/dash) line shows Bayes-Factors with a mean of d = .2 and a narrower SD of d = .2. The 95% CI still covers a rather wide range of effect sizes from -.2 to .6, but due to the normal distribution effect sizes close to the expected effect size of d = .2 are weighted more heavily.

WagF4

The first observation is that centering the normal distribution over 0 leads to the same problem as the Cauchy-distribution. When the effect size is really 0, Bayes-Factors provide clear support for the null-hypothesis. However, when the effect size is small, d = .2, Bayes-Factors fail to provide support for the presence for samples with fewer than 150 participants (this is a ones-sample design, the equivalent sample size for between-subject designs is N = 600). The dotted line shows that simply moving the mean from d = 0 to d = .2 has relatively little effect on Bayes-Factors. Due to the wide range of effect sizes, a small effect is not sufficient to produce Bayes-Factors greater than 3 in small samples. The broken line shows more promising results. With d = .2 and SD = .2, Bayes-Factors in small samples with less than 100 participants are inconclusive. For sample sizes of more than 100 participants, both lines are above the criterion value of 3. This means, a Bayes-Factor of 3 or more can support the null-hypothesis when it is true and it can show that a small effect is present when an effect is present.

Another way to specify the alternative hypothesis is to use a one-tailed alternative hypothesis (a half-normal).   The mode (the center of the normal-distribution) of the distribution is 0. The solid line shows a standard deviation of .8. The dotted line shows results with standard deviation = .5 and the broken line shows results for a standard deviation of d = .2. The solid line favors the null-hypothesis and it requires sample sizes of more than 130 participants before an effect size of d = .2 produces a Bayes-Factor of 3 or more. In contrast, the broken line discriminates against the null-hypothesis and practically never supports the null-hypothesis when it is true. The dotted line with a standard deviation of .5 works best. It always shows support for the null-hypothesis when it is true and it can produce Bayes-Factors greater than 3 with a bit more than 100 participants.

WagF5

In conclusion, the simulations show that Bayes-Factors depend on the specification of the prior distribution and sample size. This has two implications. Unreasonable priors will lower the sensitivity/power of Bayes-Factors to support either the null-hypothesis or the alternative hypothesis when these hypotheses are true. Unreasonable priors will also bias the results in favor of one of the two hypotheses. As a result, researchers need to justify the choice of their priors and they need to be careful when they interpret results. It is particularly difficult to interpret Bayes-Factors when the alternative hypothesis is diffuse and the null-hypothesis is supported. In this case, the evidence merely shows that the null-hypothesis fits the data better than the alternative, but the alternative is a composite of many effect sizes and some of these effect sizes may fit the data better than the null-hypothesis.

Comparison of Different Prior Distributions with Bem’s (2011) ESP Experiments

To examine the influence of prior distributions on Bayes-Factors, I computed Bayes-Factors using several prior distributions. I used a d~Cauchy(1) distribution because this distribution was used by Wagenmakers et al. (2011). I used three uniform prior distributions with ranges of effect sizes from 0 to 1, 0 to .5, and .1 to .3. Based on Dienes recommendation, I also used a normal distribution centered on zero with the expected effect size as the standard deviation. I used both two-tailed and one-tailed (half-normal) distributions. Based on a twitter-recommendation by Alexander Etz, I also centered the normal distribution on the effect size, d = .2, with a standard deviation of d = .2.

Wag1 Table

The d~Cauchy(1) prior used by Wagenmakers et al. (2011) gives the weakest support for an effect. The table also includes the product of Bayes-Factors. The results confirm that the product is not a meaningful statistic that can be used to conduct a meta-analysis with Bayes-Factors. The last column shows Bayes-Factors based on a traditional fixed-effect meta-analysis of effect sizes in all 10 studies. Even the d~Cauchy(1) prior now shows strong support for the presence of an effect even though it often favored the null-hypotheses for individual studies. This finding shows that inferences about small effects in small samples cannot be trusted as evidence that the null-hypothesis is correct.

Table 1 also shows that all other prior distributions tend to favor the presence of an effect even in individual studies. Thus, these priors show consistent results for individual studies and for a meta-analysis of all studies. The strength of evidence for an effect is predictable from the precision of the alternative hypothesis. The uniform distribution with a wide range of effect sizes from 0 to 1, gives the weakest support, but it still supports the presence of an effect. This further emphasizes how unrealistic the Cauchy-distribution with a scaling factor of 1 is for most studies in psychology. For most studies in psychology effect sizes greater than 1 are rare. Moreover, effect sizes greater than one do not need fancy statistics. A simple visual inspection of a scatter plot is sufficient to reject the null-hypothesis. The strongest support for an effect is obtained for the uniform distribution with a range of effect sizes from .1 to .3. The advantage of this range is that the lower bound is not 0. Thus, effect sizes below the lower bound provide evidence for H0 and effect sizes above the lower bound provide evidence for an effect. The lower bound can be set by a meaningful consideration of what effect sizes might be theoretically or practically so small that they would be rather uninteresting even if they are real. Personally, I find uniform distributions appealing because they best express uncertainty about an effect size. Most theories in psychology do not make predictions about effect sizes. Thus, it seems impossible to say that an effect is expected to be small (d = .2) or moderate (d = .5). It seems easier to say that an effect is expected to be small (d = .1 to .3) or moderate (.3 to .6) or large (.6 to 1). Cohen used fixed values only because power analysis requires a single value. As Bayesian statistics allows the specification of ranges, it makes sense to specify a range of values with the need to make predictions which values in this range are more likely. However, results for the normal distribution provide similar results. Again, the strength of evidence of an effect increases with the precision of the predicted effect. The weakest support for an effect is obtained with a normal distribution centered over 0 and a two-tailed test. This specification is similar to a Cauchy distribution but it uses the normal distribution. However, by setting the standard deviation to the expected effect sizes, Bayes-Factors show evidence for an effect. The evidence for an effect becomes stronger by centering the distribution over the expected effect size or by using a half-normal (one-tailed) test that makes predictions about the direction of the effect.

To summarize, the main point is that Bayes-Factors depend on the choice of the alternative distribution. Bayesian statisticians are of course well aware of this fact. However, in practical applications of Bayesian statistics, the importance of the prior distribution is often ignored, especially when Bayes-Factors favor the null-hypothesis. Although this finding only means that the data support the null-hypothesis more than the alternative hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis is often described in vague terms as a hypothesis that predicted an effect. However, the alternative hypothesis does not just predict that there is an effect. It makes predictions about the strength of effects and it is always possible to specify an alternative that predicts an effect that is still consistent with the data by choosing a small effect size. Thus, Bayesian statistics can only produce meaningful results if researchers specify a meaningful alternative hypothesis. It is therefore surprising how little attention Bayesian statisticians have devoted to the issue of specifying the prior distribution. The most useful advice comes from Dienes recommendation to specify the prior distribution as a normal distribution centered over 0 and to set the standard deviation to the expected effect size. If researchers are uncertain about the effect size, they could try different values for small (d = .2), moderate (d = .5), or large (d = .8) effect sizes. Researchers should be aware that the current default setting of .707 in Rouder’s online app implies an expectation of a strong effect and that this setting will make it harder to show evidence for small effects and inflates the risk of obtaining false support for the null-hypothesis.

Why Psychologists Should not Change the Way They Analyze Their Data

Wagenmakers et al. (2011) did not simply use Bayes-Factors to re-examine Bem’s claims about ESP. Like several other authors, they considered Bem’s (2011) article an example of major flaws in psychological science. Thus, they titled their article with the rather strong admonition that “Psychologists Must Change The Way They Analyze Their Data.”   They blame the use of p-values and significance tests as the root cause of all problems in psychological science. “We conclude that Bem’s p values do not indicate evidence in favor of precognition; instead, they indicate that experimental psychologists need to change the way they conduct their experiments and analyze their data” (p. 426). The crusade against p-values starts with the claim that it is easy to obtain data that reject the null-hypothesis even when the null-hypothesis is true. “These experiments highlight the relative ease with which an inventive researcher can produce significant results even when the null hypothesis is true” (p. 427). However, this statement is incorrect. The probability of getting significant results is clearly specified by the type-I error rate. When the null-hypothesis is true, a significant result will emerge only 5% of the time; that is in 1 out of 20 studies. The probability of making a type-I error repeatedly decrease exponentially. For two studies, the probability to obtain two type-I errors is only p = .0025 or 1 out of 400 (20 * 20 studies).   If some non-significant results are obtained, the binomial probability gives the probability that the frequency of significant results that could have been obtained if the null-hypothesis were true. Bem obtained 9 out of 10 significant results. With a probability of p = .05, the binomial probability is 18e-10. Thus, there is strong evidence that Bem’s results are not type-I errors. He did not just go in his lab and run 10 studies and obtained 9 significant results by chance alone. P-values correctly quantify how unlikely this event is in a single study and how this probability decrease as the number of studies increases. The table also shows that all Bayes-Factors confirm this conclusion when the results of all studies are combined in a meta-analysis.   It is hard to see how p-values can be misleading when they lead to the same conclusion as Bayes-Factors. The combined evidence presented by Bem cannot be explained by random sampling error. The data are inconsistent with the null-hypothesis. The only misleading statistic is provided by a Bayes-Factor with an unreasonable prior distribution of effect sizes in small samples. All other statistics agree that the data show an effect.

Wagenmakers et al. (2011) next argument is that p-values only consider the conditional probability when the null-hypothesis is true, but that it is also important to consider the conditional probability if the alternative hypothesis is true. They fail to mention, however, that this alternative hypothesis is equivalent to the concept of statistical power. A p-values of less than .05 means that a significant result would be obtained only 5% of the time when the null-hypothesis is true. The probability of a significant result when an effect is present depends on the size of the effect and sampling error and can be computed using standard tools for power analysis. Importantly, Bem (2011) actually carried out an a priori power analysis and planned his studies to have 80% power. In a one-sample t-test, standard error is defined as 1/sqrt(N). Thus, with 100 participants, the standard error is .1. With an effect size of d = .2, the signal-to-noise ratio is .2/.1 = 2. Using a one-tailed significance test, the criterion value for significance is 1.66. The implied power is 63%. Bem used an effect size of d = .25 to suggest that he has 80% power. Even with a conservative estimate of 50% power, the likelihood ratio of obtaining a significant is .50/.05 = 10. This likelihood ratio can be interpreted like Bayes-Factors. Thus, in a study with 50% power, it is 10 times more likely to obtain a significant result when an effect is present than when the null-hypothesis is true. Thus, even in studies with modest power, favors the alternative hypothesis much more than the null-hypothesis. To argue that p-values provide weak evidence for an effect implies that a study had very low power to show an effect. For example, if a study has only 10% power, the likelihood ratio is only 2 in favor of an effect being present. Importantly, low power cannot explain Bem’s results because low power would imply that most studies produced non-significant results. However, he obtained 9 significant results in 10 studies. This success rate is itself an estimate of power and would suggest that Bem had 90% power in his studies. With 90% power, the likelihood ratio is .90/.05 = 18. The Bayesian argument against p-values is only valid for the interpretation of p-values in a single study in the absence of any information about power. Not surprisingly, Bayesians often focus on Fisher’s use of p-values. However, Neyman-Pearson emphasized the need to also consider type-II error rates and Cohen has emphasized the need to conduct power analysis to ensure that small effects can be detected. In recent years, there has been an encouraging trend to increase power of studies. One important consequence of high powered studies is that significant results increase the evidential value of significant results because a significant result is much more likely to emerge when an effect is present than when it is not present. However, it is important to note that the most likely outcome in underpowered studies is a non-significant result. Thus, it is unlikely that a set of studies can produce false evidence for an effect because a meta-analysis would reveal that most studies fail to show an effect. The main reason for the replication crisis in psychology is the practice not to report non-significant results. This is not a problem of p-values, but a problem of selective reporting. However, Bayes-Factors are not immune to reporting biases. As Table 1 shows, it would have been possible to provide strong evidence for ESP using Bayes-Factors as well.

To demonstrate the virtues of Bayesian statistics, Wagenmakers et al. (2011) then presented their Bayesian analyses of Bem’s data. What is important here, is how the authors explain the choice of their priors and how the authors interpret their results in the context of the choice of their priors.   The authors state that they “computed a default Bayesian t test” (p. 430). The important word is default. This word makes it possible to present a Bayesian analysis without a justification of the prior distribution. The prior distribution is the default distribution, a one-size-fits-all prior that does not need any further elaboration. The authors do note that “more specific assumptions about the effect size of psi would result in a different test.” (p. 430). They do not mention that these different tests would also lead to different conclusions because the conclusion is always relative to the specified alternative hypothesis. Even less convincing is their claim that “we decided to first apply the default test because we did not feel qualified to make these more specific assumptions, especially not in an area as contentious as psi” (p. 430). It is true that the authors are not experts on PSI, but that is hardly necessary when Bem (2011) presented a meta-analysis and  made an a prior prediction about effect size. Moreover, they could have at least used a half-Cauchy given that Bem used one-tailed tests.

The results of the default t-test are then used to suggest that “a default Bayesian test confirms the intuition that, for large sample sizes, one-sided p values higher than .01 are not compelling” (p. 430). This statement ignores their own critique of p-values that the compelingness of p-values depends on the power of a study. A p-value of .01 in a study with 10% power is not compelling because it is very unlikely outcome no matter whether an effect is present or not. However, in a study with 50% power, a p-value of .01 is very compelling because the likelihood ratio is 50. That is, it is 50 times more likely to get a significant result at p = .01 in a study with 50% power when an effect is present than when an effect is not present.

The authors then emphasize that they “did not select priors to obtain a desired result” (p. 430). This statement can be confusing to non-Bayesian readers. What this statement means is that Bayes-Factors do not entail statements about the probability that ESP exists or does not exist. However, Bayes-Factors do require specification of a prior distribution. Thus, the authors did select a prior distribution, namely the default distribution, and Table 1 shows that their choice of the prior distribution influenced the results.

The authors do directly address the choice of the prior distribution and state “we also examined other options, however, and found that our conclusions were robust. For a wide range of different non-default prior distributions on effect sizes, the evidence for precognition is either non-existent or negligible” (p. 430). These results are reported in a supplementary document. In these materials., the authors show how the scaling factor clearly influences results and that small scaling factors suggest an effect is present whereas larger scaling factors favor the null-hypothesis. However, Bayes-Factors in favor of an effect are not very strong. The reason is that the prior distribution is centered over 0 and a two-tailed test is being used. This makes it very difficult to distinguish the null-hypothesis from the alternative hypothesis. As shown in Table 1, priors that contrast the null-hypothesis with an effect provide much stronger evidence for the presence of an effect. In their conclusion, the authors state “In sum, we conclude that our results are robust to different specifiications of the scale parameter for the effect size prior under H1 “ This statement is more correct than the statement in the article, where they claim that they considered a wide range of non-default prior distributions. They did not consider a wide range of different distributions. They considered a wide range of scaling parameters for a single distribution; a Cauchy-distribution centered over 0.   If they had considered a wide range of prior distributions, like I did in Table 1, they would have found that Bayes-Factors for some prior distributions suggest that an effect is present.

The authors then deal with the concern that Bayes-Factors depend on sample size and that larger samples might lead to different conclusions, especially when smaller samples favor the null-hypothesis. “At this point, one may wonder whether it is feasible to use the Bayesian t test and eventually obtain enough evidence against the null hypothesis to overcome the prior skepticism outlined in the previous section.” The authors claimed that they are biased against the presence of an effect by a factor of 10e-24. Thus, it would require a Bayes-Factor greater than 10e24 to sway them that ESP exists. They then point out that the default Bayesian t-test, a Cauchi(0,1) prior distribution, would produce this Bayes-Factor in a sample of 2,000 participants. They then propose that a sample size of N = 2,000 is excessive. This is not a principled robustness analysis. A much easier way to examine what would happen in a larger sample, is to conduct a meta-analysis of the 10 studies, which already included 1,196 participants. As shown in Table 1, the meta-analysis would have revealed that even the default t-test favors the presence of an effect over the null-hypothesis by a factor of 6.55e10.   This is still not sufficient to overcome prejudice against an effect of a magnitude of 10e-24, but it would have made readers wonder about the claim that Bayes-Factors are superior than p-values. There is also no need to use Bayesian statistics to be more skeptical. Skeptical researchers can also adjust the criterion value of a p-value if they want to lower the risk of a type-I error. Editors could have asked Bem to demonstrate ESP with p < .001 rather than .05 in each study, but they considered 9 out of 10 significant results at p < .05 (one-tailed) sufficient. As Bayesians provide no clear criterion values when Bayes-Factors are sufficient, Bayesian statistics does not help editors in the decision process how strong evidence has to be.

Does This Mean ESP Exists?

As I have demonstrated, even Bayes-Factors using the most unfavorable prior distribution favors the presence of an effect in a meta-analysis of Bem’s 10 studies. Thus, Bayes-Factors and p-values strongly suggest that Bem’s data are not the result of random sampling error. It is simply too improbable that 9 out of 10 studies produce significant results when the null-hypothesis is true. However, this does not mean that Bem’s data provide evidence for a real effect because there are two explanations for systematic deviations from a random pattern (Schimmack, 2012). One explanation is that a true effect is present and that a study had good statistical power to produce a signal-to-noise ratio that produces a significant outcome. The other explanation is that no true effect is present, but that the reported results were obtained with the help of questionable research practices that inflate the type-I error rate. In a multiple study article, publication bias cannot explain the result because all studies were carried out by the same researcher. Publication bias can only occur when a researcher conducts a single study and reports a significant result that was obtained by chance alone. However, if a researcher conducts multiple studies, type-I errors will not occur again and again and questionable research practices (or fraud) are the only explanation for significant results when the null-hypothesis is actually true.

There have been numerous analyses of Bem’s (2011) data that show signs of questionable research practices (Francis, 2012; Schimmack, 2012; Schimmack, 2015). Moreover, other researchers have failed to replicate Bem’s results. Thus, there is no reason to believe in ESP based on Bem’s data even though Bayes-Factors and p-values strongly reject the hypothesis that sample means are just random deviations from 0. However, the problem is not that the data were analyzed with the wrong statistical method. The reason is that the data are not credible. It would be problematic to replace the standard t-test with the default Bayesian t-test because the default Bayesian t-test gives the right answer with questionable data. The reason is that it would give the wrong answer with credible data, namely it would suggest that no effect is present when a researcher conducts 10 studies with 50% power and honestly reports 5 non-significant results. Rather than correctly inferring from this pattern of results that an effect is present, the default-Bayesian t-test, when applied to each study individually, would suggest that the evidence is inconclusive.

Conclusion

There are many ways to analyze data. There are also many ways to conduct Bayesian analysis. The stronger the empirical evidence is, the less important the statistical approach will be. When different statistical approaches produce different results, it is important to carefully examine the different assumptions of statistical tests that lead to the different conclusions based on the same data. There is no superior statistical method. Never trust a statistician who tells you that you are using the wrong statistical method. Always ask for an explanation why one statistical method produces one result and why another statistical method produces a different result. If one method seems to make more reasonable assumptions than another (data are not normally distributed, unequal variances, unreasonable assumptions about effect size), use the more reasonable statistical method. I have repeatedly asked Dr. Wagenmakers to justify his choice of the Cauchi(0,1) prior, but he has not provide any theoretical or statistical arguments for this extremely wide range of effect sizes.

So, I do not think that psychologists need to change the way they analyze their data. In studies with reasonable power (50% or more), significant results are much more likely to occur when an effect is present than when an effect is not present, and likelihood ratios will show similar results as Bayes-Factors with reasonable priors. Moreover, the probability of a type-I errors in a single study is less important for researchers and science than long-term rate of type-II errors. Researchers need to conduct many studies to build up a CV, get jobs, grants, and take care of their graduate students. Low powered studies will lead to many non-significant results that provide inconclusive results. Thus, they need to conduct powerful studies to be successful. In the past, researchers often used questionable research practices to increase power without declaring the increased risk of a type-I error. However, in part due to Bem’s (2011) infamous article, questionable research practices are becoming less acceptable and direct replication attempts more quickly reveal questionable evidence. In this new culture of open science, only researchers who carefully plan studies will be able to provide consistent empirical support for a theory because the theory actually makes correct predictions. Once researchers report all of the relevant data, it is less important how these data are analyzed. In this new world of psychological science, it will be problematic to ignore power and to use the default Bayesian t-test because it will typically show no effect. Unless researches are planning to build a career on confirming the absence of effects, they should conduct studies with high-power and control type-I error rates by replicating and extending their own work.