#P-values

Should I say ''there is no difference'' or ''the difference is not significant''?

Published at June 1, 2022 ·  5 min read

In a recent manuscript we wrote a sentence similar to the following: “On average, the genotype A gave a yield of 12.4 tons per hectare, while the genotype B gave 10.6 tons per hectare and such a difference was not significant (P = 0.20)”. Perhaps I should point out that we were talking about maize yields… One of the reviewers complained that “This is an example of expression having no place in a scientific paper” and that we should write: “… no difference in yield was found between A and B (P = 0....