Statistical significance

Science and logic

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• Anecdotal evidence
• Burden of proof
• Occam's razor
• Evidence
• Falsifiability
• File-drawer effect
• Peer review in frontier subject areas
• Positive claims
• Science
• Scientific consensus and frontier subject areas
• Scientific fact
• Standards of evidence
• Statistical significance

Statistical significance occurs when the analysis of the data shows that the probability that the result could occur by chance is below 5%, which is called the confidence level. This is the same as saying that one can be 95% confident that the result indicates something real. In frontier subject areas such as parapsychology, statistical significance has often been much higher than this. However, skeptical commentators have sometimes claimed that because the phenomena being studied are, in their opinion, extremely unlikely to exist, the levels of significance required to prove such phenomena should be much higher than in normal science.