  In a Forum published in EOS Transactions AGU (2009) entitled "Lies, damned
lies and statistics (in Geology)", Vermeesch (2009) claims that "statistical
significant is not the same as geological significant", in other words,
statistical tests may be misleading. In complete contradiction, we affirm that
statistical tests are always informative. We detail the several mistakes of
Vermeesch in his initial paper and in his comments to our reply. The present
text is developed in the hope that it can serve as an illuminating pedagogical
exercise for students and lecturers to learn more about the subtleties,
richness and power of the science of statistics.
