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This weak form of hypothesis testing neglects effect size, is universally misinterpreted, and is disastrously prone to error when combined with high-throughput cell biology. The solution is for analysis of measurements to start and end with an interpretation of effect size. In this manuscript, I walk through some of the common critiques of significance testing and how they relate to experimental cell biology. I argue that careful consideration of effect size should be returned to its central position in the planning and discussion of cell biological research. To facilitate this shift in focus, I recommend replacing P values with confidence intervals as cell biology\u2019s default statistical analysis.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1083\/jcb.202403034","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,23]],"date-time":"2025-07-23T13:08:43Z","timestamp":1753276123000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1083\/jcb.crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Alternative to the statistical mass confusion of testing for \u201cno effect\u201d"],"prefix":"10.1083","volume":"224","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2657-2416","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Josh L.","family":"Morgan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01yc7t268","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Washington University in St. Louis 1 Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Neuroscience, Biology and Biomedical Science, , St. Louis, MO,","place":["USA"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"291","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025072418064871500_bib1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4","DOI":"10.1038\/s41562-017-0224-0","article-title":"Remove, rather than redefine, statistical significance","volume":"2","author":"Amrhein","year":"2018","journal-title":"Nat. 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