A frequentist and a Bayesian walk into a trial

In the stand-off between Bayesians and frequentists, the latter own the show for pivotal trials. But with non-profits leading the drive, Bayesians are poised to enter late-stage development via platform trials in cancer. The next areas to benefit might be pediatric and rare diseases, where the approach can maximize learnings from limited data.

Despite widespread panning of the limitations of p-values, and broad agreement that Bayesian analyses can reduce costs, shorten timelines and reduce patient exposure to treatments that don’t work, Bayesian designs have yet to take hold beyond dose-finding studies. ...