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(2015) Synthese 192 (4).
Error statistics (ES) is an important methodological view in philosophy of statistics and philosophy of science that can be applied to scientific experiments such as clinical trials. In this paper, I raise two potential issues for ES when it comes to guiding, and explaining early stopping of randomized controlled trials (RCTs): (a) ES (via its severity principle) provides limited guidance in cases of early unfavorable trends due to the possibility of trend reversal; (b) ES is silent on how to prospectively control error rates in experiments requiring multiple interim analyses. The method of conditional power, together with a rationing principle for RCTs, can assist ES in addressing such issues.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0602-3
Full citation:
Stanev, R. (2015). Early stopping of Rcts: two potential issues for error statistics. Synthese 192 (4), pp. 1089-1116.
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