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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

235109

Early stopping of Rcts

two potential issues for error statistics

Roger Stanev

pp. 1089-1116

Abstract

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

Published in:

Pietarinen Ahti-Veikko J. (2015) Peirce's logic and philosophy of language. Synthese 192 (4).

Pages: 1089-1116

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0602-3

Full citation:

Stanev Roger (2015) „Early stopping of Rcts: two potential issues for error statistics“. Synthese 192 (4), 1089–1116.