[HN Gopher] Use of Bayesian methodology in clinical trials of dr...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Use of Bayesian methodology in clinical trials of drug and
       biological products [pdf]
        
       Author : brendanashworth
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2026-01-15 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.fda.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.fda.gov)
        
       | levocardia wrote:
       | Accepting Bayesian methods for RCTs is great news and leading
       | biostatisticians like Frank Harrell have been pushing for this
       | change for many years. What I'm most interested to see: will this
       | actually be implemented in practice, or will it be incredibly
       | rare and niche, like Bayesian methods are currently in most
       | biomedical fields?
        
         | strangattractor wrote:
         | Please watch https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2TWu_4gd-ik
         | 
         | Been used since the 90s.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | [delayed]
        
         | brendanashworth wrote:
         | If choosing a Bayesian approach in a clinical trial can reduce
         | the number of recruited subjects, I would imagine the pharma
         | industry is strongly incentivized to adopt it.
        
         | nextos wrote:
         | Regulators are generally really conservative.
         | 
         | Spiegelhalter already wrote a fantastic textbook on Bayesian
         | methods for trial analysis back in 2004. It is a fantastic
         | book, and used by statisticians in other fields. I have seen it
         | quoted in e.g. DeepMind presentations.
         | 
         | Bayesian methods enable using prior information and fancy
         | adaptive trial designs, which have the potential to make drug
         | development much cheaper. It's also easier to factor in utility
         | functions and look at cost:benefit. But things move slowly.
         | They are used in some trials, but not the norm, and require
         | rowing against the stream.
         | 
         | Journals are also conservative. But Bayesian methods are not
         | that niche anymore. Even mainstream journals such as _Nature_
         | or _Nature Genetics_ include Bayesian-specific items in their
         | submission checklists. For example, they require you to
         | indicate prior choice and MCMC parameters [1].
         | 
         | [1] https://www.nature.com/documents/nr-reporting-summary-
         | flat.p...
        
       | esafak wrote:
       | Anything noteworthy here? I noticed they did not mention causal
       | inference.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2026-01-15 23:00 UTC)