This misuse of statistical significance is a standard practice in science. At least they have decency to tell you about insignificant results, as opposed to sweeping them under the carpet.
This pretend significance, while mathematically false, isn’t all that bad. With the bias journals have against publishing research in support of null hypotheses, very little would get published—or more likely some other tricks would be invented as bad as this one. And no matter how much you abused statistical significance by doing multiple independent tests, if someone repeats your study and finds the same result, it is honestly statistically significant then.
This misuse of statistical significance is a standard practice in science. At least they have decency to tell you about insignificant results, as opposed to sweeping them under the carpet.
This pretend significance, while mathematically false, isn’t all that bad. With the bias journals have against publishing research in support of null hypotheses, very little would get published—or more likely some other tricks would be invented as bad as this one. And no matter how much you abused statistical significance by doing multiple independent tests, if someone repeats your study and finds the same result, it is honestly statistically significant then.