Sure, but what is going on is that statistics textbooks have been teaching nonsense since the 1940s, and that nonsense has been taken as gospel.

It is no accident that statistics is usually presented as arising anonymously and forming a monolithic paradigm, when in fact the exact opposite is true. Stats must be one of the most controversial areas of intellectual activity around. Those refs are to start off the curious, some of whom will manage to break free of the brainwashing and think for themselves.