Question

Decisions about alpha level may be different, especially as it relates from hard sciences to social sciences. For example, medical trials for cancer treatments are conducted at an alpha of 0.0001. For "hard" and social sciences, alpha of 0.05 is used. Do you agree with these alpha levels? Why or why not? Provide a specific example and interpretation of "significance" in your answer.

Answer 1

First of all, we know that alpha is the level of significance or maximum probability of committing type 1 error which error arises due to rejecting a true hypothesis.

The value of alpha is generally taken as 0.05 or 0.01 as depend upon the hypothesis or situation as you have mentioned in hard sciences to social sciences. Basically, you should know the meaning of 0.05 or 0.01 level of significance. 0.05 alpha means there can be 5 error in out of 100 and 0.01 alpha means there can be 1 error in out of 100. Here, I am giving you two different example for your better understanding as below:

example 1: Let us consider there are two drug A & B for the treatment of the same disease. In this case, a researcher tries to give better medicine to the patient. That's why the researcher can take 0.01 alpha and he can test the hypothesis.

example 2: Let us consider there is two manufacturer of electric bulb A & B and both claims that the lifetime of my bulb is higher than the other. So, in this case a researcher can put alpha=0.05 and he can test the hypothesis.