Lost in Statistics

The present paper investigates one aspect of questionable research practices relating to Arabic L1 learners of foreign languages, namely the use of statistics. The objective of the paper is to argue that reproducible research requires adopting wise practices in linguistics and that the excessive focus on quantification does not seem to serve this purpose. Statistical significance tests in quantitative research are routinely used in linguistic inquiry as well as language teaching and learning studies with a view to supporting the relevant explanatory insights in linguistics. In this article, I will expose the misuse of statistics by doctoral students in English departments of Morocco working on Arabic L1 learners’ data, by highlighting some practices that are at odds with international good practices in academic research in linguistics. I will take stock of the current questionable practices in this regard to dispel some of the misunderstanding about the use of statistics which is now gaining grounds lest this becomes an orthodoxy. I will argue that research on Arabic L1 learners’ data should be focused more on exploration and discovery, as well as the validation of epistemological insights than on mere descriptive quantification geared to hypothesis verification. These areas of focus constitute the crux of academic research in linguistics, but they seem to be lost in statistics in doctoral students’ theses. Recommendations and solutions are provided for enhancing transparency and improving reproducibility of doctoral research outcomes to advance theory building and the delivery of new research lines in linguistics as well as to avoid the risk of research waste, in line with the requirements of open science.