Karen Kafadar, 2019 ASA President
At the November 2019 ASA Board meeting, members of the board approved the following motion:
An ASA Task Force on Statistical Significance and Replicability will be created, with a charge to develop thoughtful principles and practices that the ASA can endorse and share with scientists and journal editors. The task force will be appointed by the ASA President with advice and participation from the ASA BOD. The task force will report to the ASA BOD by November 2020.
Co-chairs Linda Young and Xuming He will be working with ASA Staff member Elizabeth Henry to support the Task Group. With suggestions from board members, the following ASA members—from various research emphases, statistical approaches, and disciplines—were identified as task force members:
Linda Young, National Agricultural Statistics Service and University of Florida (Co-Chair)
Xuming He, University of Michigan (Co-Chair)
Yoav Benjamini, Tel Aviv University
Dick De Veaux, Williams College (ASA Vice President)
Bradley Efron, Stanford University
Scott Evans, The George Washington University (ASA Publications Representative)
Mark Glickman, Harvard University (ASA Section Representative)
Barry Graubard, National Cancer Institute
Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
Vijay Nair, Wells Fargo and University of Michigan
Nancy Reid, University of Toronto
Stephen Stigler, The University of Chicago
Stephen Vardeman, Iowa State University
Chris Wikle, University of Missouri
Tommy Wright, US Census Bureau
Based on the initial meeting, these members decided “replicability” was more in line with the critical issues than “reproducibility” (cf. National Academy of Sciences report, hence the title of the task force is ASA Task Force on Statistical Significance and Replicability.
Young and He welcome input and are working with ASA Director of Awards, Committees, and Elections Elizabeth Henry on a mechanism for receiving comments from the community.
I thank Karen Kafadar for her efforts to establish this working group, to further develop thoughtful principles and practices guidelines, and clear up confusion resulting from the March 2019 supplement to The American Statistician.
I note a plethora of sensible and expert statisticians on this Task Group, but wonder why the statistical philosopher Deborah Mayo is not included. Her cogent ideas on sound philosophical underpinnings to statistical methods would be extremely valuable in the development of thoughtful principles and practices in 21st century statistics.