Christopher Tong

List of Selected Publications and Abstracts

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Philosophy and Principles of Statistical Practice

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C. Tong, 2019: Statistical inference enables bad science; statistical thinking enables good science. The American Statistician, 73 (Sup 1): 246-261.
- Published in the special issue on Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond p < 0.05.
- Discussed on Andrew Gelman’s blog, Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science here and especially here. After expressing some concerns and disagreements, he writes: “Overall, though, I agree with Tong’s message, and I think everybody should read his article.”
- R. Picard and D. Osthus (2022) call this paper “an insightful historical review of overconfident statistical inference.” This paper has also been cited by a few other statisticians such as Yihui Xue (2019) and Sander Greenland (2023), though the latter misspelled my name as “Toh”. Gang (John) Xie favorably discussed this paper in Amstat News (December, 2024 issue). However most of this paper’s citations (as I intended and hoped) are by non-statisticians.
- On the other hand, this paper has attracted fierce criticism, particularly from Deborah Mayo (especially here) and by the editor of the International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science (2d ed., Springer, 2025), Miodrag Lovric, in an article he placed in his encyclopedia (pp. 2847-2856). The back-and-forth discussion on Prof. Mayo’s blog was substantive, but she won the argument by blocking my ability to post further responses. Nobel Peace Prize-nominee Prof. Lovric’s alleged “comprehensive rebuttal” fails to engage in a single one of the arguments advanced in my paper, while demonstrating a profound unfamiliarity with the history of science.
- Presented at the the 41st Midwest Biopharmaceutical Statistics Workshop, 14-16 May 2018, Indianapolis, IN.
- Presented at the Nevada Chapter of the American Statistical Association, 2017 Annual Symposium and Meeting, 14 October 2017, Reno, NV.
B. Gunter and C. Tong, 2017: What are the odds!? The “airport fallacy” and statistical inference. Significance, 14 (4): 38-41.
- B. Gunter and C. Tong, 2018: Reply to John A. Lewis. Significance, 15 (1): 46-47.
- B. Gunter and C. Tong, 2017: Reply to Justin Smith. Significance, 14 (6): 46.