Validating new discoveries in sports medicine: we need FAIR play beyond p values.

There is concern that a large proportion of scientific research is based on false-positive, non-replicable conclusions.1 As most experimental research in sports medicine is based on frequentist reasoning, p values have been at the centre of knowledge claims and new discoveries within this field. But many researchers and clinicians are unable to define or accurately interpret p values. Common misconceptions are that p values represent ‘the probability that the null hypothesis is true’ or ‘the probability that the hypothesis being tested is true’.2 In effect, p values only quantify the chances of getting the observed data (on the assumption that the null hypothesis is true) and therefore cannot exclusively inform clinical decision making. This editorial presents FAIR: a four-item approach to help validate new discovery in sports medicine. False-positive risk (FPR) is ‘the probability of observing a statistically significant p-value and declaring that an effect is real, when it is not’.2 Crucially, a study’s FPR can be high, even when the corresponding p values are low. In a systematic audit of high-quality randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in sports physiotherapy, 18% of ‘statistically significant’ findings had a …