Stats
Likelihood software for clinical trials (June 29, 2006).
Category: Statistical computing
A member of our local IRB forwarded a press release announcing new software that would
revolutionize the conduct of clinical trials. The company is called Analytical Edge and they
offer a software program called Pure Likelihood. There is only a limited amount of
information at the website:
But the web page of one of the founders of the company, Jeffrey Blume, includes some talks
and papers about the topic. The basic thrust is that the p-value is not a good tool for
making decisions about whether a drug is safe and/or efficacious, and it should be replaced
with the likelihood ratio. The best paper
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Likelihood methods for measuring statistical evidence. J. D. Blume. Stat Med 2002:
21(17); 2563-99.
[Medline]
[Abstract] [PDF]
(Model, Likelihood)
is well worth reading. The likelihood ratio is much more nimble at capturing information
appropriate for interim analyses, for example.
Dr. Blume is not the first to criticize the p-value, and some interesting links if you
want to explore this further are listed below.
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Special Issue:
Statistical Significance Testing. Dennis Roberts, Penn State University.
Accessed on 2003-03-20. "The Fall 1998 Issue of Research in the Schools, was a special
full issue on Statistical Significance Testing. This issue contained 6 primary papers and 3
follow up comments. The Editors and Publishers of Research in the Schools agreed to have
this issue put in a web format." roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/sigtest.htm
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326 Articles/Books
Questioning the Indiscriminate Use of Statistical Hypothesis Tests in Observational Studies.
William L. Thompson. Accessed on 2003-03-19. "The following list of citations is the
result of an extensive, but by no means complete, search for articles/book chapters that
address the problems associated with applying statistical hypothesis tests (a.k.a. null
hypothesis tests, null hypothesis statistical tests, hypothesis tests, statistical
significance tests, significance tests, etc.) to observational studies."
www.cnr.colostate.edu/~anderson/thompson1.html
07/08/2008.
