Last week I posted a comment on a paper by Neil Johnson and colleagues that I now regret. The comment amounted to a bit of statistical pedantry on my part regarding some of the wording in the paper. It was my wording in this post, and specifically the title, which would have benefited from some additional consideration before publishing. In the post, I refer to the p-value fallacy but I would like to make clear that in no way is the paper itself fallacious. The wording I took issue with in no way invalidates nor debunks the findings of this paper.

The paper’s lead author has written a response in the comments of the original post.

I believe blogging and open conversation about scientific publications to be an important part of the scientific process. However, by associating the word ‘fallacy’ with an entire paper, I fear that this may have unjustly damaged the reputation of the paper and its authors.

I sincerely hope that this post will do some good toward righting this error.