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The Pearson goodness-of-fit test has null hypothesis that the independent counts follow the fitted Poisson regression, in particular $\mathrm{Var}(Y_i\mid d_i)={\mu }_i$, against the alternative that the model does not fit; in this setting the scientifically relevant direction is overdispersion, $\mathrm{Var}(Y_i\mid d_i)>{\mu }_i$. Under the null, $X_P^2$ is approximately chi-squared distribution with $16$ degrees of freedom. Its tiny $p$-value decisively rejects the Poisson variance assumption.

The negative binomial regression keeps the logarithmic mean model but allows $\mathrm{Var}(Y_i\mid d_i)={\mu }_i+{\mu }_i^2/\theta$. It improves the residual deviance from $75.806$ to $18.011$, close to its $16$ residual degrees of freedom, and lowers the Akaike information criterion from $172.34$ to $141.66$. Both comparisons strongly favour the negative-binomial fit, although its dose coefficient remains statistically insignificant.