Zohydro ER was studied in over 1,100 people living with chronic pain who participated in the pivotal Phase 3 efficacy study or an open-label Phase 3 long-term safety study. The efficacy study that enrolled over 500 subjects with chronic low back pain met the primary endpoint in demonstrating that treatment with Zohydro ER resulted in significantly improved chronic pain relief compared to placebo.
I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
I hesitate to say too much about a poll where I am not privy to its final aims, but it seems quite plausible that the point of this poll was to decide who Americans admire the *most*. It looks like they got a pretty clear answer to that question. It would be very hard (i.e., require so many respondents) to design a poll powered to differentiate between each possible candidate at some alpha level.
So, I don't share your criticism of this poll as much as the summary in this article.
Cool, I actually used TiddlyWiki before I found org-mode:). It wasn't at all bad, but since I do everything else in Emacs, org-mode makes sense.
Plus, I use it for more than just organizing information. Like writing reports and authoring HTML and PDF content with embedded R code for example, which obviously is not the point of TW.
Org-mode is essentially to organizers as Emacs is to text editors, i.e., slowly becoming a platform of its own.
Two org-mode posts at the exact same minute:). The uses of org-mode are too numerous to mention in one post, but just to give a little more context... Org is essentially an outliner, event planner, calendar, PDF and HTML authoring system, multi-language code-authoring environment (babel), time tracker, shopping list maintainer, contact database,...
All this and it's Free Software, too. The mailing list and community is one of the most responsive out there. I've heard many people say that learning emacs is worth it just for org-mode alone.
You sound like you'd benefit highly from Emacs org-mode (http://orgmode.org), which functions not only as a day planner and TODO manager, but a plain text authoring system. You can export to many targets, including both LaTeX and HTML. If you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out, the community is great and the project is growing daily. The latest big inclusion is the ability to embed executable source code for literate programming.
Well, no one was born knowing what the equals sign represents. In fact, it's been around only for 500 years. My personal opinion is that until we start forcing graduates of US Education programs to take at least a little math beyond passing out of algebra, the cycle is doomed to repeat.
FTFA, 'Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction."'
I can second this. I did a Master's in Biostatistics, and have a computing background from undergrad. It sounds like this would be a good fit for you, since you're working in a related field already. In the five years I've been working at universities since my Master's, I've had a lot of different experiences, ranging from large clinical trials to military projects. Your computing background will make you a very valuable asset to almost any group you work in, as a lot of stats people are entering from a math background and have little formal programming experience. It's a really good fit for me, because it allows me to balance my time between consulting, designing studies, and programming to analyze them. R and SAS are the two big programs that people in biostat tend to use. I'd look into it if I were you.
There are, however, many quality degree programs in Statistics. As someone who went through one of them, you can largely choose your own mix of theory and practice. I wonder if this isn't just statistics rebranded? I hope it doesn't concentrate too much on certain proprietary software packages. Statistics is like anything else. You can easily produce a bunch of numbers and compile massive books of tables and graphics. But if you don't know the assumptions of each of your methods, and consequently their shortcomings in each situation, you can draw some fairly bad conclusions rather quickly. I just hope this program gives a solid background in theoretical statistical inference, experimental design, and regression analysis, so students understand the 'why'.
In my experience, what you describe, accounting, is a separate discipline under the Business school, where Economics is usually its own department. An Econ major would almost never need to take a single accounting class I imagine, if they chose not to.
I have not read the details of this study, but consider the following example, with included R code so you can replicate it. It is a hypothetical study where 6 subjects are randomly determined to be administered treatment, and 6 subjects are randomly given placebo. All 6 in the treatment arm are cured of blindness. None of the 6 in the placebo arm are. The p-value for Fisher's exact test, which is a *conservative* test (i.e., has lower size than the proclaimed alpha level) yields a p-value of ~ 0.002, a highly significant finding. Granted, N = 12, not 6, in my study, but only 6 were given treatment.
Your claims about this not demonstrating safety are valid, as this study was not powered to detect safety issues. But a follow-up study surely will be.
My point is that you don't need a large sample size to prove something causes an event if the odds of the event happening spontaneously are practically nil, as my example shows. And as another poster pointed out, this is how medical research progresses, and you screaming on Slashdot what every third-rate scientist in the medical profession already knows is pointless.
R code: trial = data.frame(trt = rep(c("Treatment", "Placebo"), each = 6),
out = rep(c("Cured", "Not Cured"), each = 6))
tbl = table(trial$trt, trial$out)
fisher.test(tbl)
Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data
data: tbl p-value = 0.002165 alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1 95 percent confidence interval:
0.0000000 0.2837803 sample estimates: odds ratio
0
Read online editions of New England Journal, Lancet, JAMA, etc. There are *plenty* of placebo controlled trials being done all the time by major pharma companies in almost every disease area. I don't know why you wouldn't think there aren't. I've worked on several major ones in the last 5 years.
Slashdot Mirror
The Phase III study "Study 801" of the compound under discussion did have an open-label run-in period, *and* was placebo controlled.
I believe the ct.gov link below is the study under consideration. Regardless, the press release mentions the placebo control.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/...
http://ir.zogenix.com/phoenix....
From the last link:
Zohydro ER was studied in over 1,100 people living with chronic pain who participated in the pivotal Phase 3 efficacy study or an open-label Phase 3 long-term safety study. The efficacy study that enrolled over 500 subjects with chronic low back pain met the primary endpoint in demonstrating that treatment with Zohydro ER resulted in significantly improved chronic pain relief compared to placebo.
UHF! Only saw it once, probably 15-20 years ago, and still remember that line...
I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
Well, I am a statistician, too.
I hesitate to say too much about a poll where I am not privy to its final aims, but it seems quite plausible that the point of this poll was to decide who Americans admire the *most*. It looks like they got a pretty clear answer to that question. It would be very hard (i.e., require so many respondents) to design a poll powered to differentiate between each possible candidate at some alpha level.
So, I don't share your criticism of this poll as much as the summary in this article.
Get ready for McLizard.
Cool, I actually used TiddlyWiki before I found org-mode :). It wasn't at all bad, but since I do everything else in Emacs, org-mode makes sense.
Plus, I use it for more than just organizing information. Like writing reports and authoring HTML and PDF content with embedded R code for example, which obviously is not the point of TW.
Org-mode is essentially to organizers as Emacs is to text editors, i.e., slowly becoming a platform of its own.
Two org-mode posts at the exact same minute :). The uses of org-mode are too numerous to mention in one post, but just to give a little more context... Org is essentially an outliner, event planner, calendar, PDF and HTML authoring system, multi-language code-authoring environment (babel), time tracker, shopping list maintainer, contact database, ...
All this and it's Free Software, too. The mailing list and community is one of the most responsive out there. I've heard many people say that learning emacs is worth it just for org-mode alone.
Check out http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/index.php for more use cases and tutorials/talks. Incredible piece of software, cannot recommend it enough.
Emacs org-mode (http://orgmode.org). Your life in plain text. Nothing else compares.
You sound like you'd benefit highly from Emacs org-mode (http://orgmode.org), which functions not only as a day planner and TODO manager, but a plain text authoring system. You can export to many targets, including both LaTeX and HTML. If you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out, the community is great and the project is growing daily. The latest big inclusion is the ability to embed executable source code for literate programming.
UHF reference! Totally forgot about this awesome movie until now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6TBrfCW54
Didn't their society end up collapsing? Yes, the human race went on, but with quite a gap in the ideals of that culture.
Well, it's $5 a month. Lots of people spend about that at Starbucks every *day* of the week, so I don't it's really a show-stopper price...
No, we use 'x' over here, too.
Well, no one was born knowing what the equals sign represents. In fact, it's been around only for 500 years. My personal opinion is that until we start forcing graduates of US Education programs to take at least a little math beyond passing out of algebra, the cycle is doomed to repeat.
FTFA, 'Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction."'
Uh huh, see point 1 = 1 + 0 above.
The Lund's grocer I shop at in Northeast Minneapolis does it just this way. Another reason I feel justified spending 20% more for my food :).
The fact that they bag your groceries is another reason. It's common in MN to have to do it yourself.
I hope they went to every store with an "express lane for less than 10 items". Shudder.
Surely there must be some studies that have randomly assigned security vs. no security to properties in neighborhoods, and then tracked theft?
I can second this. I did a Master's in Biostatistics, and have a computing background from undergrad. It sounds like this would be a good fit for you, since you're working in a related field already. In the five years I've been working at universities since my Master's, I've had a lot of different experiences, ranging from large clinical trials to military projects. Your computing background will make you a very valuable asset to almost any group you work in, as a lot of stats people are entering from a math background and have little formal programming experience. It's a really good fit for me, because it allows me to balance my time between consulting, designing studies, and programming to analyze them. R and SAS are the two big programs that people in biostat tend to use. I'd look into it if I were you.
There are, however, many quality degree programs in Statistics. As someone who went through one of them, you can largely choose your own mix of theory and practice. I wonder if this isn't just statistics rebranded? I hope it doesn't concentrate too much on certain proprietary software packages. Statistics is like anything else. You can easily produce a bunch of numbers and compile massive books of tables and graphics. But if you don't know the assumptions of each of your methods, and consequently their shortcomings in each situation, you can draw some fairly bad conclusions rather quickly. I just hope this program gives a solid background in theoretical statistical inference, experimental design, and regression analysis, so students understand the 'why'.
I must say I was literally lol'ing the whole time at this post too.
In my experience, what you describe, accounting, is a separate discipline under the Business school, where Economics is usually its own department. An Econ major would almost never need to take a single accounting class I imagine, if they chose not to.
I am a biostatistician.
I have not read the details of this study, but consider the following example, with included R code so you can replicate it. It is a hypothetical study where 6 subjects are randomly determined to be administered treatment, and 6 subjects are randomly given placebo. All 6 in the treatment arm are cured of blindness. None of the 6 in the placebo arm are. The p-value for Fisher's exact test, which is a *conservative* test (i.e., has lower size than the proclaimed alpha level) yields a p-value of ~ 0.002, a highly significant finding. Granted, N = 12, not 6, in my study, but only 6 were given treatment.
Your claims about this not demonstrating safety are valid, as this study was not powered to detect safety issues. But a follow-up study surely will be.
My point is that you don't need a large sample size to prove something causes an event if the odds of the event happening spontaneously are practically nil, as my example shows. And as another poster pointed out, this is how medical research progresses, and you screaming on Slashdot what every third-rate scientist in the medical profession already knows is pointless.
R code:
trial = data.frame(trt = rep(c("Treatment", "Placebo"), each = 6),
out = rep(c("Cured", "Not Cured"), each = 6))
tbl = table(trial$trt, trial$out)
fisher.test(tbl)
Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data
data: tbl
p-value = 0.002165
alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
95 percent confidence interval:
0.0000000 0.2837803
sample estimates:
odds ratio
0
Your point of view is right, thank you for sharing, if you have the time, also came to see my site...
If you're going to spam forums, at least learn a bit about the culture there. No self-respecting Slashdotter would start a post how you did.
Now this could actually turn violent!
Read online editions of New England Journal, Lancet, JAMA, etc. There are *plenty* of placebo controlled trials being done all the time by major pharma companies in almost every disease area. I don't know why you wouldn't think there aren't. I've worked on several major ones in the last 5 years.