[animefan]

This article is a good summary of the issues of the (mis)use of statistics in science. Having done some research myself, in most cases the statistics don't scream a particular message to you, and it's really hard to understand the data. Even without any external pressures, statistical tools like p-values have limits. If you run 10 different models (all a priori reasonable) and 8 of them seem to say roughly the same thing, does that mean your result is correct?