David, while James argument might not hold much water, your comparison doesn't either. I believe we can safely assume that the approval process has two distinct possible outcomes: approved or not approved.
To compare a coin flip coming out heads or tails (which we know will happen 100% of the time) to approval (which is only one possible outcome and will not necessarily happen 100% of the time) is a mistake. Since there is another possible outcome, and there must be otherwise the FDA would just approve it without this step, we must assume that approval is not the only possible outcome.
Now, having said all that, since there are two possible outcomes we can safely say that at least some infintesimally small number of priority reviews will not get approval.
As a person trained in math and risk analysis, your argument should have been that the law of averages is only a law that pertains to a series of results whose true characteristics can only be defined as the number of individual tests in the series approaches infinity. Since the case of Viagra getting approval or not is only 1 test the law of averages does not apply. In any individual test, the probability is still the probability and not a function of all prior results that have come before it.
If Viagra had to be reviewed 100 times, and the chances are 1 in 100 that Viagra will not get approved in any given review, on the 100th time, even after 99 other approvals, the chances of Viagra getting approved is still 99% in that given individual review.
Good luck,
Gary
P.S. Did this satisfy your craving for something other than medical technicalities. |
