Much ado about something : a response to "COVID-19: underpowered randomised trials, or no randomised trials?"
© 2021. The Author(s)..
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) for infectious diseases such as COVID-19 are particularly challenging given the complexities of what is both practical and ethical to randomize. We are often faced with the difficult decision between having weak trials or not having a trial at all. In a recent article, Dr. Atle Fretheim argues that statistically underpowered studies are still valuable, particularly in conjunction with other similar studies in meta-analysis in the context of the DANMASK-19 trial, asking "Surely, some trial evidence must be better than no trial evidence?" However, informative trials are not always feasible, and feasible trials are not always informative. In some cases, even a well-conducted but weakly designed and/or underpowered trial such as DANMASK-19 may be uninformative or worse, both individually and in a body of literature. Meta-analysis, for example, can only resolve issues of statistical power if there is a reasonable expectation of compatible well-designed trials. Uninformative designs may also invite misinformation. Here, we make the case that-when considering informativeness, ethics, and opportunity costs in addition to statistical power-"nothing" is often the better choice.
| Errataetall: | |
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| Medienart: |
E-Artikel |
| Erscheinungsjahr: |
2021 |
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| Erschienen: |
2021 |
| Enthalten in: |
Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:22 |
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| Enthalten in: |
Trials - 22(2021), 1 vom: 07. Nov., Seite 780 |
| Sprache: |
Englisch |
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| Beteiligte Personen: |
Haber, Noah A [VerfasserIn] |
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| Links: |
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| Themen: |
DANMASK-19 |
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| Anmerkungen: |
Date Completed 09.11.2021 Date Revised 04.04.2024 published: Electronic ErratumIn: Trials. 2021 Dec 22;22(1):951. - PMID 34937573 Citation Status MEDLINE |
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| doi: |
10.1186/s13063-021-05755-y |
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| funding: |
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| Förderinstitution / Projekttitel: |
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| PPN (Katalog-ID): |
NLM332818047 |
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| 520 | |a © 2021. The Author(s). | ||
| 520 | |a Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) for infectious diseases such as COVID-19 are particularly challenging given the complexities of what is both practical and ethical to randomize. We are often faced with the difficult decision between having weak trials or not having a trial at all. In a recent article, Dr. Atle Fretheim argues that statistically underpowered studies are still valuable, particularly in conjunction with other similar studies in meta-analysis in the context of the DANMASK-19 trial, asking "Surely, some trial evidence must be better than no trial evidence?" However, informative trials are not always feasible, and feasible trials are not always informative. In some cases, even a well-conducted but weakly designed and/or underpowered trial such as DANMASK-19 may be uninformative or worse, both individually and in a body of literature. Meta-analysis, for example, can only resolve issues of statistical power if there is a reasonable expectation of compatible well-designed trials. Uninformative designs may also invite misinformation. Here, we make the case that-when considering informativeness, ethics, and opportunity costs in addition to statistical power-"nothing" is often the better choice | ||
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| 650 | 4 | |a Statistical power | |
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