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Illusion and reality in the analysis of clinical trials
Author(s) -
Meier Paul
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.4780121518
Subject(s) - illusion , interpretation (philosophy) , allowance (engineering) , clinical trial , epistemology , psychology , covariate , cognitive psychology , medicine , computer science , econometrics , philosophy , mathematics , economics , pathology , operations management , programming language
A great deal of writing and research on the proper interpretation of clinical trial results rests on misperceptions of reality. The two issues dealt with here are the notions that 1 Allowance for covariate effects is essential to the valid interpretation of results. 2 Commonly accepted ethical principles require the termination of a trial as soon as the evidence is persuasive that the therapies are not equivalent.Both of these are illusions and both have had pernicious effects in the analysis and interpretations of important trials.