Comment by fitsumbelay
5 days ago
I've only read the first paragraph so bear with me but I'm not understanding the reasoning behind "A/B testing drugs is bad because only half of the sample can potentially benefit" when the whole point is to delineate the gots and got-nots ...
If the drug is effective and safe, then one half of the patients lost out on the benefit. You are intentionally "sacrificing" the control arm.
(Of course, the whole point is that the benefit and safety are not certain, so I think the term "sacrifice" used in the article is misleading.)
And the control group is also sacrificed from potentially deadly side effects.
My understanding is they usually do small trials early where they figure out if there are deadly side effects, and then do larger effectiveness trials once there’s determined to be minimal danger. So being in the control group is probably a negative thing on average.