Science, Ziliak and McCloskey say, needs to learn both whether and how much. But the putatively common practice of ending the empirical analysis by checking whether a calculated test statistic does or doesn’t reject the null hypothesis according to a 5 percent or some other a-sized crtical region is basically to stop at the question of existence without addressing the scientific issue of magnitude

That is Saul Hymans, reviewing The Cult of Statistical Significance. His review appears in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Economic Literature, which just came in yesterday’s mail.