Tag: frequentist inference

“Moneyball,” the 2012 election, and science- and evidence-based medicine

Regular readers of my other blog probably know that I’m into more than just science, skepticism, and promoting science-based medicine (SBM). I’m also into science fiction, computers, and baseball, not to mention politics (at least more than average). That’s why our recent election, coming as it did hot on the heels of the World Series in which my beloved Detroit Tigers utterly...

/ November 12, 2012

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part IV, Continued: More Cochrane and a little Bayes

OK, I admit that I pulled a fast one. I never finished the last post as promised, so here it is. Cochrane Continued In the last post I alluded to the 2006 Cochrane Laetrile review, the conclusion of which was: This systematic review has clearly identified the need for randomised or controlled clinical trials assessing the effectiveness of Laetrile or amygdalin for...

/ March 4, 2011

Prior Probability: the Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”—Continued

This is an addendum to my previous entry on Bayesian statistics for clinical research.† After that posting, a few comments made it clear that I needed to add some words about estimating prior probabilities of therapeutic hypotheses. This is a huge topic that I will discuss briefly. In that, happily, I am abetted by my own ignorance. Thus I apologize in advance for simplistic or incomplete...

/ February 22, 2008

Prior Probability: The Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”

This is actually the second entry in this series;† the first was Part V of the Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine series, which began the discussion of why Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is not up to the task of evaluating highly implausible claims. That discussion made the point that EBM favors equivocal clinical trial data over basic science, even if the latter is both...

/ February 15, 2008