Comment by A_D_E_P_T
2 years ago
Are you ignoring the fact that it might have a negative effect, rather than a protective effect?
The range for men is -1.9 to +2.1 -- which averages out to +0.2 -- which indeed makes it seem as though the vaccine's trend is to make one slightly more susceptible to Alzheimer's, rather than less susceptible, which is itself borne out in the figure's trend line. (Fig 4.)
For women it's -5.3 to -1.3.
>Are you ignoring the fact that it might have a negative effect, rather than a protective effect?
Nope. We can be 95% confident that there is an effect for women but we can't be 95% certain that there is no effect for men.
Given that the error ranges overlap, we don't even have a high level of certainty that the effect for men doesn't equal the effect for women.
> The range for men is -1.9 to +2.1 -- which averages out to +0.2
Technically it averages out as +0.1
> we can't be 95% certain that there is no effect for men.
They're at P=0.93 right now. So they're very close.
Whereas, for women, P=0.0013.
Taking everything into consideration, that's exactly what I'd call "a high level of certainty that the effect for men doesn't equal the effect for women."
> They're at P=0.93 right now. So they're very close.
A big P value is bad.
> that's exactly what I'd call "a high level of certainty that the effect for men doesn't equal the effect for women."
Then you are operating off a non-standard cutoff for certainty because the paper explicitly states that the difference between the effect on male vs female is only statistically significant for the sub category of Alzheimer's.
Doesn't this mean that the chance of a true but unobserved -1.9 magnitude effect in men is much greater than the chance of a true but unobserved +0.0 magnitude effect in women?
Sure, but, by the same token, it also means that there's a chance of a true but unobserved +2 magnitude effect in men.
That means there's a decent chance that the real effect in men is in the range e.g. [-1.9, -1.0] but this study was unlucky or underpowered in men to see that effect.