[R] OT Really: Odds Are, It's Wrong...

Dieter Menne dieter.menne at menne-biomed.de
Tue Mar 16 21:52:00 CET 2010



Johannes Huesing wrote:
> 
> I have little  problems with scientists publishing all their findings with
> p-values (or 
> confidence intervals) but big problems with people who use them as a
> filter.
> 

While I am aware that CI and p-values have a common root, I do not to throw
both into one pot for the average medical end-user. 

When two treatments for blood pressure show a significant differences, this
only tells you that the sponsor had a lot of money to show his expensive new
product is worth the money.  When you tell the medical doctor that the CI of
the difference has a range 1.1 mmHg , she would say: I don't care, it's not
relevant, both products are good enough for me.

I tend to strongly stress the difference between relevance (medically
weighted CI) and significance (pure numerics) in lectures. After all, it's
difficult enough when doing sample size estimation to get something like a
"medically relevant difference".

So I have to pay back by giving them a medically-to-be-weighted difference
after study end.

Dieter
 

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