Q:

Large p-values have lower FDRs than small p-values

This a conceptual question.
I ran 10 tests and sorted the p-values in an increasing manner.
I calculate the FDR as p-value * (10 / rank)
Then, in this case, the larger the p-value, the lower the FDR:
p-value rank    FDR
0.16    1   1.60
0.17    2   0.85
0.18    3   0.60
0.19    4   0.48
0.2 5   0.40
0.21    6   0.35
0.22    7   0.31
0.23    8   0.29
0.24    9   0.27
0.25    10  0.25

If I set a significance threshold of p-value=<0.25, and an FDR threshold of =< 0.25, should I consider that the test with a p-value = 0.25 has only a probability of 25% of being a false positive, while the other tests, although having lower p-values, have higher probabilities of being false positives, just because they are higher in the ranking?
How should this be interpreted?
Thanks!

A:

It is common practice to keep original p-values and p-values resulting from FDR (or any other correction) in the same order (possibly with ties).
So, if for original p-values, you have $p_1 < p_2 $, and after FDR correction, you get $FDR(p_1) > FDR(p_2)$, you can simply take $FDR(p_1) = FDR(p_2) = min\{FDR(p_1) , FDR(p_2)\}$.
This is what, for example, R function p.adjust does:
p.adjust((16:25)/100, method='fdr')
0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25

