Book
1925
Statistical Methods for Research Workers
Ronald A. Fisher
Lays out the statistical tools - significance testing, analysis of variance, the design of experiments - that became the working method of experimental psychology and every other quantitative science that followed it.
Read itWhere it is now wrong
The p < 0.05 convention it established became the publication threshold the replication crisis indicted ninety years later. Fisher offered it as one judgement among many rather than a gate, and the book is worth reading for how much more careful he was than the practice named after him.
Before you start
FreeAdvancedlink checked 17 Sept 2026
Groundwork for
Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.
- Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft PsychologyPaul E. Meehl, 1978Argues that null-hypothesis significance testing lets weak, vague theories in 'soft' areas of psychology look like they are accumulating support decade after decade, because almost any predicted direction of effect is enough to count as confirmation.
- The Earth Is Round (p < .05)Jacob Cohen, 1994Argues null-hypothesis significance testing does not tell researchers what they think it does - it cannot say how probable a hypothesis is - and that psychology's near-total reliance on it has done the field lasting damage.
Filed under Research Methods & the Replication Crisis in Psychology.