A systemic, often institutionalized practice of applying statistical corrections or data transformations that systematically lower significance across a field, usually to make inconvenient results disappear. Unlike p‑hacking (which targets individual studies), p‑squelching operates through
broad methodological mandates: requiring overly
conservative multiple‑comparison corrections, demanding absurdly high thresholds, or enforcing normalization procedures that wash out
real signals. The effect is a gradual erosion of statistical
power across many studies, making it nearly impossible to publish results that challenge dominant narratives. It’s statistical gatekeeping as slow violence.
P-
Squelching (Systemic Statistical Erosion) Example: “The journal required a Bonferroni correction on every secondary analysis, even when the tests were theoretically
independent – p‑squelching, burying all exploratory findings under institutional
dust.”