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Non-Tech : Bill Wexler's Dog Pound -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: out_of_the_loop who wrote (3772)	9/20/1999 10:24:00 AM
From: Hank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10293

"The university statisticians were comfortable with the statistical significance..." That's nice. The FDA's statisticians, on the other hand, would probably bust a gut laughing if a drug company were to submit such a small clinical trial as proof of a drugs efficacy.

To: out_of_the_loop who wrote (3772)	9/21/1999 9:08:00 PM
From: Druss	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10293

For the GUMM longs. Marconi brought out some aspects of the study that has been mentioned here that I would like to question in more detail. Specifically as reported the study is relying on self diagnosing of the test population as to whether they have colds or not. This is a badly flawed model. Considering the number of cold viruses out there and the number of subjects the sample size is very small. This sounds more like a very preliminary study done by a company to determine if they should consider more tests of a given product. I am not a medical researcher and do not have extensive medical training but I do have considerable statistical training. This study could be shredded by a high school senior with a good statistical background. The study should be double blind and as much as possible the infectious agent (the various cold viruses) should be controlled by either introducing them to the test population or at least confirmed by testing each subject to determine whether they were actually infected with a cold virus and the variety. Since the claims are that it acts to stop a cold I would want to see the virus introduced to the subjects so the period of duration of the infection could be accurately monitored. Because of the large number of viruses out there this could be a rather large study population and would likely be expensive. However considering the nature of the market I would think it worth doing. All things considered a claim of a cure for the common cold is an extraordinary claim and should have solid unquestionable research to back it up. I don't see anything like that in the study as reported so far. All the Best Druss