Significant

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XKCD cartoon showing how, if you torture the data enough, they will confess to anything.

• Format Cartoons
• Language/s English
• Target Audience Self-directed learning
• EBM Stage 3 - Appraising evidence
• Duration <5 mins
• Difficulty Introductory

Key Concepts addressed

• 2-3g Statistical significance is not the same as importance
• 2-3e Subgroup analyses may be misleading

Details

If statistical tests are applied repeatedly to treatment outcome measures in different subgroups, one in 20 – on average – will yield a ‘statistically significant’ association <0.05.