A scientific result is considered “statistically significant” if there’s a less than one in 20 chance that it could happen by chance – if you measure 20 different things, you’ll probably get one positive result, as this XKCD demonstrates.
Sources
- Image: Significant, xkcd webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
- How Scientists Are Doing A Bait-And-Switch With Medical Data, BuzzFeed, Jan. 22, 2016.
- Enjoy our health comic strips album on Flickr.