There are many conceptual articles in gerontology, one of the earliest concepts is a mutation accumulation theory of aging by Peter Medawar in 1952, Free radical theory of aging by Denham Harman in 1956. We also proposed the middle-life crisis theory, at that time, we were working on the concepts of age-related memory impairment and dementia, which we see confusion (see below). Statistics is just a methodology to add confidence to the claims.

https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-Middle-life-Crisis-Theory-of-Aging

Thanks for sharing the link. Since Birren (1999) mentioned Gerontological research as "data rich but theory poor," many scholars emphasize its theoretical values than in earlier days. We should (indicating the top-tier journals) continue to support researchers who place higher values on conceptual articles to flourish the interdisciplinary nature of Gerontology.

I've published several article that focused on theory and did not include statistical significance and p values.