In the first two chapters of Numbersense, I discuss how people game statistics, and why gaming is inevitable. I have also written about the placebo effect before. Another article has appeared covering the same topic -- the industry doesn't like the fact that more and more drugs fail to clear the "placebo" hurdle; and the industry thinks the problem is that the placebo effect is mysteriously increasing over time.
What is new in that BBC News item is the extensive conversations with people who run clinical trials. They reveal a variety of tricks they use to game the numbers.
Read our latest Statbusters column in the Daily Beast here.
Regression to the mean is a more likely explanation than placebo effect in a lot of trials. Why it may be increasing is because only more extreme cases are recruited for many trials.
The simplest trick in an RCT is pick subjects who have done poorly on the comparator, which they usually have, otherwise they wouldn't want to participate in a trial. That makes it difficult to compare the results to the way the drug is usually used which will be in patients starting out on therapy.
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What is new in this item BBC News is intensive talks with the people who run clinical trials. They reveal a variety of tricks they use numbers game.
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which they usually have, otherwise they wouldn't want to participate in a trial. That makes it difficult to compare the results to the way the drug is usually used which will be in patients starting out on therapy.
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