The Need for Nuance in the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing Debate

Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) provides an important statistical toolbox, but there are a number of ways in which it is often abused and misinterpreted, with bad consequences for the reliability and progress of science. Parts of contemporary NHST debate, especially in the psychological sciences, is reviewed, and a suggestion is made that a new distinction between strongly, weakly, and very weakly anti-NHST positions is likely to bring added clarity to the debate.