The Rise of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST): Institutional Massification and the Emergence of a Procedural Epistemology

TL;DR

This paper explores how NHST became dominant in scientific research by functioning as a social technology that facilitated institutional expansion, despite its technical limitations in statistical inference.

Contribution

It situates the rise of NHST within its historical and institutional context, highlighting its role as a procedural tool that addressed institutional challenges during postwar scientific expansion.

Findings

NHST became a dominant social technology in postwar science.

Its procedural features enabled self-sufficiency across diverse research settings.

NHST's dominance is linked to institutional needs rather than technical superiority.

Abstract

It has long been a puzzle why, despite sustained reform efforts, many applied scientific fields remain dominated by Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST), a framework that dichotomizes study results and privileges "statistically significant" findings. This paper examines that puzzle by situating the development and rise of NHST within its historical and institutional context. Taking Actor-Network Theory as a point of entry, the analysis identifies the conditions under which particular inferential technologies stabilize and endure. The analysis shows that, although NHST does not resolve the technical problem of statistical inference, it came to dominate as a social technology that addressed the most pressing institutional challenge of the postwar period: the mass expansion of scientific networks. Under conditions of rapid institutional growth, NHST's technical slippages--purging research context and replacing epistemic judgment with mechanical procedures--became functional features rather than flaws. These features enabled procedural self-sufficiency across settings marked by heterogeneous goals and uneven expertise, thereby sealing NHST's position as the obligatory passage point in many postwar scientific fields.