Statistics, costs and rationality in ecological inference

The so-called 'null hypothesis' debate in ecology opened a statistical Pandora's Box. Ecologists were forced to question whether or not decades of pattern analysis had been productive. Over the past few years, the debate has expanded beyond the role of different kinds of statistical hypothesis to include the importance of different types of statistical error. Our objective in this article is to show how trends governing ecological inferences under uncertainty appear to be changing as ecologists become increasingly aware o f the potential importance of statistical errors.