Individual atoms, or small numbers of them, may be beneath some noise floor, but not combined atoms.
A salt crystal (Lattice of NaCl atoms) is nothing like a pure gold nugget (clump of Au atoms).
That difference is a massive effect.
So to begin with, we have this sort of massive effect which requires an explanation, which is where atoms then come in.
Maybe the right language here is not that we need an effect rather than statistical significance, but that we need a clear, unmistakable phenomenon. There has to be a phenomenon, which is then explained by research. Research cannot be inventing the phenomenon by whiffing at the faint fumes of statistical significance.
A salt crystal (Lattice of NaCl atoms) is nothing like a pure gold nugget (clump of Au atoms).
That difference is a massive effect.
So to begin with, we have this sort of massive effect which requires an explanation, which is where atoms then come in.
Maybe the right language here is not that we need an effect rather than statistical significance, but that we need a clear, unmistakable phenomenon. There has to be a phenomenon, which is then explained by research. Research cannot be inventing the phenomenon by whiffing at the faint fumes of statistical significance.