Abstract

I describe and question the argument that in psychological research, the significance test should be replaced by a more informative index in the case of theory-corroboration experimentation because it has been made on the basis of some debatable assumptions about the rationale of scientific investigation. The rationale of theory-corroboration experimentation requires nothing more than a binary decision about the relation between two variables. This binary decision supplies the minor premise for the syllogism implicated when a theory is being tested. Some metatheoretical considerations reveal that the magnitude of the effect - size estimate is not a satisfactory alternative to the significance test.