A colleague sent me a draft manuscript with the typo “statically significant”. A typo that passes a spell check but would surely not pass reviewers and editors?
Oh dear, a PubMed search reveals that it has snuck past reviewers and editors, many many times. There are 975 abstracts that have used this nonsense phrase. There should be a celebration for the 1000th paper!
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Surely that’s only in the terrible journals though? Well only if you consider JAMA to be terrible (abstract here).
It has also happened in BMJ Open, BMC Surgery, and — of all places — Reading and Writing, which “publishes high-quality scientific articles pertaining to the processes, acquisition, and loss of reading and writing skills” and is also contributing to that loss.
“Statically” is a good word, it often gets paired with “charged”, like statically charged hair from a Van de Graaff Generator.
“Statistically” is a good word, it often gets paired with “significant” to the detriment of both.
I didn’t think that the use of “statistical significance” could get any worse, but I was wrong. It’s an immovable trope that’s become so lazily used that you can throw it down using free-form spelling and still get published.
All this recent worry about what semi-intelligent machines might write. I remain deeply concerned about the writings of people.