Moving biological anthropology research beyond p < 0.05

We invite all to an admittedly ambitious collective process regarding the way in which we are designing our studies in biological anthropology, the way we are analyzing and interpreting data, and the way we arrive at scientifically (not just statistically) valid conclusions. Changing research habits that we have been trained to adopt for decades is challenging. However, we think that biological anthropology will only benefit from shifting the focus away from statistical significance to a research philosophy that focuses instead on scientific inference and statistical thinking. The proposed changes will place the primary responsibility of assessing the “significance” of our research more on the expertise of researchers than on rules like p < 0.05. Any result in biological anthropology research should not be considered “significant” because the p-value says so, but because in view of the study design, data quality, implemented methods and data analysis, prior research, and scientific context, authors, reviewers, and editors consider it to be so.