Download or read book The Poison Trials written by Alisha Rankin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story. At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend. The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.
Download or read book Small Clinical Trials written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clinical trials are used to elucidate the most appropriate preventive, diagnostic, or treatment options for individuals with a given medical condition. Perhaps the most essential feature of a clinical trial is that it aims to use results based on a limited sample of research participants to see if the intervention is safe and effective or if it is comparable to a comparison treatment. Sample size is a crucial component of any clinical trial. A trial with a small number of research participants is more prone to variability and carries a considerable risk of failing to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given intervention when one really is present. This may occur in phase I (safety and pharmacologic profiles), II (pilot efficacy evaluation), and III (extensive assessment of safety and efficacy) trials. Although phase I and II studies may have smaller sample sizes, they usually have adequate statistical power, which is the committee's definition of a "large" trial. Sometimes a trial with eight participants may have adequate statistical power, statistical power being the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is false. Small Clinical Trials assesses the current methodologies and the appropriate situations for the conduct of clinical trials with small sample sizes. This report assesses the published literature on various strategies such as (1) meta-analysis to combine disparate information from several studies including Bayesian techniques as in the confidence profile method and (2) other alternatives such as assessing therapeutic results in a single treated population (e.g., astronauts) by sequentially measuring whether the intervention is falling above or below a preestablished probability outcome range and meeting predesigned specifications as opposed to incremental improvement.
Download or read book When Experiments Travel written by Adriana Petryna and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenal growth of global pharmaceutical sales and the quest for innovation are driving an unprecedented search for human test subjects, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. Our hope for medical progress increasingly depends on the willingness of the world's poor to participate in clinical drug trials. While these experiments often provide those in need with vital and previously unattainable medical resources, the outsourcing and offshoring of trials also create new problems. In this groundbreaking book, anthropologist Adriana Petryna takes us deep into the clinical trials industry as it brings together players separated by vast economic and cultural differences. Moving between corporate and scientific offices in the United States and research and public health sites in Poland and Brazil, When Experiments Travel documents the complex ways that commercial medical science, with all its benefits and risks, is being integrated into local health systems and emerging drug markets. Providing a unique perspective on globalized clinical trials, When Experiments Travel raises central questions: Are such trials exploitative or are they social goods? How are experiments controlled and how is drug safety ensured? And do these experiments help or harm public health in the countries where they are conducted? Empirically rich and theoretically innovative, the book shows that neither the language of coercion nor that of rational choice fully captures the range of situations and value systems at work in medical experiments today. When Experiments Travel challenges conventional understandings of the ethics and politics of transnational science and changes the way we think about global medicine and the new infrastructures of our lives.
Download or read book Sharing Clinical Trial Data written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data sharing can accelerate new discoveries by avoiding duplicative trials, stimulating new ideas for research, and enabling the maximal scientific knowledge and benefits to be gained from the efforts of clinical trial participants and investigators. At the same time, sharing clinical trial data presents risks, burdens, and challenges. These include the need to protect the privacy and honor the consent of clinical trial participants; safeguard the legitimate economic interests of sponsors; and guard against invalid secondary analyses, which could undermine trust in clinical trials or otherwise harm public health. Sharing Clinical Trial Data presents activities and strategies for the responsible sharing of clinical trial data. With the goal of increasing scientific knowledge to lead to better therapies for patients, this book identifies guiding principles and makes recommendations to maximize the benefits and minimize risks. This report offers guidance on the types of clinical trial data available at different points in the process, the points in the process at which each type of data should be shared, methods for sharing data, what groups should have access to data, and future knowledge and infrastructure needs. Responsible sharing of clinical trial data will allow other investigators to replicate published findings and carry out additional analyses, strengthen the evidence base for regulatory and clinical decisions, and increase the scientific knowledge gained from investments by the funders of clinical trials. The recommendations of Sharing Clinical Trial Data will be useful both now and well into the future as improved sharing of data leads to a stronger evidence base for treatment. This book will be of interest to stakeholders across the spectrum of research-from funders, to researchers, to journals, to physicians, and ultimately, to patients.
Download or read book Field Trials of Health Interventions written by Peter G. Smith and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Before new interventions are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in field trials'. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long periods. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in the trials that have been conducted have rarely been published. A consequence of this, individuals planning such trials have few guidelines available and little access to knowledge accumulated previously, other than their own. In this manual, practical issues in trial design and conduct are discussed fully and in sufficient detail, that Field Trials of Health Interventions may be used as a toolbox' by field investigators. It has been compiled by an international group of over 30 authors with direct experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of field trials in low and middle income countries and is based on their accumulated knowledge and experience. Available as an open access book via Oxford Medicine Online, this new edition is a comprehensive revision, incorporating the new developments that have taken place in recent years with respect to trials, including seven new chapters on subjects ranging from trial governance, and preliminary studies to pilot testing.
Download or read book The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-12-21 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Randomized clinical trials are the primary tool for evaluating new medical interventions. Randomization provides for a fair comparison between treatment and control groups, balancing out, on average, distributions of known and unknown factors among the participants. Unfortunately, these studies often lack a substantial percentage of data. This missing data reduces the benefit provided by the randomization and introduces potential biases in the comparison of the treatment groups. Missing data can arise for a variety of reasons, including the inability or unwillingness of participants to meet appointments for evaluation. And in some studies, some or all of data collection ceases when participants discontinue study treatment. Existing guidelines for the design and conduct of clinical trials, and the analysis of the resulting data, provide only limited advice on how to handle missing data. Thus, approaches to the analysis of data with an appreciable amount of missing values tend to be ad hoc and variable. The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials concludes that a more principled approach to design and analysis in the presence of missing data is both needed and possible. Such an approach needs to focus on two critical elements: (1) careful design and conduct to limit the amount and impact of missing data and (2) analysis that makes full use of information on all randomized participants and is based on careful attention to the assumptions about the nature of the missing data underlying estimates of treatment effects. In addition to the highest priority recommendations, the book offers more detailed recommendations on the conduct of clinical trials and techniques for analysis of trial data.
Download or read book The Power of Experiments written by Michael Luca and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How tech companies like Google, Airbnb, StubHub, and Facebook learn from experiments in our data-driven world—an excellent primer on experimental and behavioral economics Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world. Luca and Bazerman describe the central role experiments play in the tech sector, drawing lessons and best practices from the experiences of such companies as StubHub, Alibaba, and Uber. Successful experiments can save companies money—eBay, for example, discovered how to cut $50 million from its yearly advertising budget—or bring to light something previously ignored, as when Airbnb was forced to confront rampant discrimination by its hosts. Moving beyond tech, Luca and Bazerman consider experimenting for the social good—different ways that governments are using experiments to influence or “nudge” behavior ranging from voter apathy to school absenteeism. Experiments, they argue, are part of any leader's toolkit. With this book, readers can become part of “the experimental revolution.”
Download or read book Introductory Statistics written by Douglas S. Shafer and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Turnaway Study written by Diana Greene Foster and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Now with a new afterword by the author"--Back cover.
Download or read book Observation and Experiment written by Paul Rosenbaum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daily glass of wine prolongs life—yet alcohol can cause life-threatening cancer. Some say raising the minimum wage will decrease inequality while others say it increases unemployment. Scientists once confidently claimed that hormone replacement therapy reduced the risk of heart disease but now they equally confidently claim it raises that risk. What should we make of this endless barrage of conflicting claims? Observation and Experiment is an introduction to causal inference by one of the field’s leading scholars. An award-winning professor at Wharton, Paul Rosenbaum explains key concepts and methods through lively examples that make abstract principles accessible. He draws his examples from clinical medicine, economics, public health, epidemiology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry to explain how randomized control trials are conceived and designed, how they differ from observational studies, and what techniques are available to mitigate their bias. “Carefully and precisely written...reflecting superb statistical understanding, all communicated with the skill of a master teacher.” —Stephen M. Stigler, author of The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom “An excellent introduction...Well-written and thoughtful...from one of causal inference’s noted experts.” —Journal of the American Statistical Association “Rosenbaum is a gifted expositor...an outstanding introduction to the topic for anyone who is interested in understanding the basic ideas and approaches to causal inference.” —Psychometrika “A very valuable contribution...Highly recommended.” —International Statistical Review
Download or read book Reproducibility and Replicability in Science written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.
Download or read book Evidence Ethos and Experiment written by P. Wenzel Geissler and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical research has been central to biomedicine in Africa for over a century, and Africa, along with other tropical areas, has been crucial to the development of medical science. At present, study populations in Africa participate in an increasing number of medical research projects and clinical trials, run by both public institutions and private companies. Global debates about the politics and ethics of this research are growing and local concerns are prompting calls for social studies of the “trial communities” produced by this scientific work. Drawing on rich, ethnographic and historiographic material, this volume represents the emergent field of anthropological inquiry that links Africanist ethnography to recent concerns with science, the state, and the culture of late capitalism in Africa.
Download or read book Bad Blood written by James H. Jones and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1993 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern classic of race and medicine updated with an additional chapter on the Tuskegee experiment's legacy in the age of AIDS.
Download or read book Uncontrolled written by Jim Manzi and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know which social and economic policies work, which should be continued, and which should be changed? Jim Manzi argues that throughout history, various methods have been attempted -- except for controlled experimentation. Experiments provide the feedback loop that allows us, in certain limited ways, to identify error in our beliefs as a first step to correcting them. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, scientists invented a methodology for executing controlled experiments to evaluate certain kinds of proposed social interventions. This technique goes by many names in different contexts (randomized control trials, randomized field experiments, clinical trials, etc.). Over the past ten to twenty years this has been increasingly deployed in a wide variety of contexts, but it remains the red-haired step child of modern social science. This is starting to change, and this change should be encouraged and accelerated, even though the staggering complexity of human society creates severe limits to what social science could be realistically expected to achieve. Randomized trials have shown, for example, that work requirements for welfare recipients have succeeded like nothing else in encouraging employment, that charter school vouchers have been successful in increasing educational attainment for underprivileged children, and that community policing has worked to reduce crime, but also that programs like Head Start and Job Corps, which might be politically attractive, fail to attain their intended objectives. Business leaders can also use experiments to test decisions in a controlled, low-risk environment before investing precious resources in large-scale changes -- the philosophy behind Manzi's own successful software company. In a powerful and masterfully-argued book, Manzi shows us how the methods of science can be applied to social and economic policy in order to ensure progress and prosperity.
Download or read book Experimental and Quasi Experimental Designs for Research written by Donald T. Campbell and published by Ravenio Books. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We shall examine the validity of 16 experimental designs against 12 common threats to valid inference. By experiment we refer to that portion of research in which variables are manipulated and their effects upon other variables observed. It is well to distinguish the particular role of this chapter. It is not a chapter on experimental design in the Fisher (1925, 1935) tradition, in which an experimenter having complete mastery can schedule treatments and measurements for optimal statistical efficiency, with complexity of design emerging only from that goal of efficiency. Insofar as the designs discussed in the present chapter become complex, it is because of the intransigency of the environment: because, that is, of the experimenter’s lack of complete control.
Download or read book Design of Experiments for Engineers and Scientists written by Jiju Antony and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-02-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tools and techniques used in Design of Experiments (DoE) have been proven successful in meeting the challenge of continuous improvement in many manufacturing organisations over the last two decades. However research has shown that application of this powerful technique in many companies is limited due to a lack of statistical knowledge required for its effective implementation.Although many books have been written on this subject, they are mainly by statisticians, for statisticians and not appropriate for engineers. Design of Experiments for Engineers and Scientists overcomes the problem of statistics by taking a unique approach using graphical tools. The same outcomes and conclusions are reached as through using statistical methods and readers will find the concepts in this book both familiar and easy to understand.This new edition includes a chapter on the role of DoE within Six Sigma methodology and also shows through the use of simple case studies its importance in the service industry. It is essential reading for engineers and scientists from all disciplines tackling all kinds of manufacturing, product and process quality problems and will be an ideal resource for students of this topic. - Written in non-statistical language, the book is an essential and accessible text for scientists and engineers who want to learn how to use DoE - Explains why teaching DoE techniques in the improvement phase of Six Sigma is an important part of problem solving methodology - New edition includes a full chapter on DoE for services as well as case studies illustrating its wider application in the service industry
Download or read book The Progress of Experiment written by Harry M. Marks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the origins of contemporary drug regulation and the modern clinical trial.
