Statistics Colloquium on Jun 04, 2013 (mornings)

Tuesday, Jun 4, 2013 10:00 am

Ethics and Optimality in Clinical Trials

Theodore von Kármán Fellow
Prof. William F. Rosenberger (George Mason University, USA)

Abstract:
Clinical  trials  are  the  gold  standard  for  the  comparison  of  two  treatments,  but  the  ethical
dilemma  arises  when  using  randomization  to  assign  treatments  to  human  subjects.    Ran-
domization prevents bias and provides a basis for inference, but many patients in the clinical
trial may receive an inferior treatment due to chance.  We present a template for developing
randomization  procedures  that  target  an  optimal  allocation  ratio  in  a  bivariate  objective
problem.    For  example, we  can  find  the allocation that  minimizes the  expected  number  of
treatment  failures  for  a  fixed  power  to  detect  the  treatment  effect.    A  response-adaptive
randomization procedure is used to converge to the optimal allocation.

Time: 10:00 - 11:30 am

Location: Hörsaal Phil (ehem. Couvengymnasium) der RWTH, Kármánstraße 17-19, 52062 Aachen