fisher's exact test (R) - simulated p-value does not vary

Question

I have a problem using fisher’s exact test in R with a simulated p-value, but I don’t know if it’s a caused by “the technique” ( R ) or if it is (statistically) intended to work that way.

One of the datasets I want to work with:

matrix(c(103,0,2,1,0,0,1,0,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,19,3,57,11,2,87,1,2,0,869,4,2,8,1,4,3,18,16,5,60,60,42,1,1,1,1,21,704,40,759,404,151,1491,9,40,144),ncol=2,nrow=27)

The resulting p-value is always the same, no matter how often I repeat the test:

p = 1 / (B+1)
(B = number of replicates used in the Monte Carlo test)

When I shorten the matrix it works if the number of rows is lower than 19. Nevertheless it is not a matter of number of cells in the matrix. After transforming it into a matrix with 3 columns it still does not work, although it does when using the same numbers in just two columns.

Varying simulated p-values:

>a <- matrix(c(103,0,2,1,0,0,1,0,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,869,4,2,8,1,4,3,18,16,5,60,60,42,1,1,1,1,21),ncol=2,nrow=18)

>b <- matrix(c(103,0,2,1,0,0,1,0,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,19,869,4,2,8,1,4,3,18,16,5,60,60,42,1,1,1,1,21,704),ncol=2,nrow=19)

>c <- matrix(c(103,0,2,1,0,0,1,0,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,869,4,2,8,1,4,3,18,16,5,60,60,42,1,1,1,1,21),ncol=3,nrow=12)

>fisher.test(a,simulate.p.value=TRUE)$p.value

Number of cells in a and b are the same, but the simulation only works with matrix a. Does anyone know if it is a statistical issue or a R issue and, if so, how it could be solved?

Thanks for your suggestions

Answer 1

I think that you are just seeing a very significant result. The p-value is being computed as the number of simulated (and the original) matrices that are as extreme or more extreme than the original. If none of the randomly generated matrices are as or more extreme then the p-value will just be 1 (the original matrix is as extreme as itself) divided by the total number of matrices which is $B+1$ (the B simulated and the 1 original matrix). If you run the function with enough samples (high enough B) then you will start to see some of the random matrices as or more extreme and therefor varying p-values, but the time to do so is probably not reasonable.