Estimating the historical minimum false-positive risk of statistically significant reported outcomes in anaesthesia and pain medicine

Published on February 9, 2026

Anaesthesia. 2026 Feb 9. doi: 10.1111/anae.70142. Online ahead of print.

Clinical research is driven by the search for safe and efficient interventions to improve patient outcomes. Traditionally, treatment efficiency is assessed within the framework of null hypothesis significance testing. However, this does not address a crucial question when reporting a statistically significant result: what is the risk that my discovery (in the sense of statistical significance) is wrong? Equating this false-positive risk with the p value would correspond to one of many misinterpretations of statistical testing. To illustrate this problem, I will statistically estimate the minimum false-positive risk in a large set of reported outcomes in randomised controlled trials in anaesthesia and pain medicine.

PMID:41657241 | DOI:10.1111/anae.70142

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