A Further Examination of Excesses or Deficits of Terminal Zeroes in Scientific Research: Using Binomial Testing to Assess Probabilities for Different Anomaly Classifications as a Function of Different Sample Sizes of Coefficients with Terminal Digits

One feature recognized as a possible indication of fraudulent research is a deficit or excess of zeroes as terminal digits, compared to an expected rate of ten percent, in coefficients reported for regression and standard error coefficients. Some have translated various percentages of zeroes as terminal digits into an anomaly measure (e.g., fewer than three percent or more than twenty percent of zeroes as terminal digits might be classified as a “major†anomaly while 3.01 to 5.00% or 15.00 to 19.99% might be classified as a “moderate†anomaly). However, it has not been clear if such ordinal classifications have any meaning in terms of probability or statistical significance.