A recent article in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine asserted the following1, ‘We begin by saying that p values themselves are not flawed. Rather, the use, misuse or abuse of p values in ways antithetical to rigorous scientific pursuits is the flaw’. We show that this assertion is both wrong and misleading.

To demonstrate the errors, we start with another wrong assertion on the same page: ‘The only information to be gleaned from p values is whether the observed data are likely where the null hypothesis (that no effect exists) [is] true’. This assertion erroneously assumes that p values are based on null hypotheses when instead they are based …