Preprint: A Bayesian Reanalysis of the Effects of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin on Viral Carriage in Patients with COVID-19 (Reply to Gautret et al. 2020)

Below is a summary of a preprint that features a Bayesian reanalysis of the famous/infamous Gautret et al. data. What I like about this preprint is (a) the multiverse analysis; (b) the Bayesian conclusions — they are so easy to obtain with JASP, and provide much more information then just “p<.05” or “p>.05”; but what I like most of all…

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Corona and the Statistics Wars

As the corona-crisis engulfs the world, politicians left and right are accused of “politicizing” the pandemic. In order to follow suit I will try to weaponize the pandemic to argue in favor of Bayesian inference over frequentist inference. In recent months it has become clear that the corona pandemic is not just fought by doctors, nurses, and entire populations as…

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Preprint: Default Bayes Factors for Testing the (In)equality of Several Population Variances

This post summarizes Dablander, F.⭑, van den Berg, D.⭑, Ly, A., Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2020). Default Bayes Factors for Testing the (In)equality of Several Population Variances. Preprint available on ArXiv:                                     https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.06278. Abstract “Testing the (in)equality of variances is an important problem in many…

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David Spiegelhalter’s Gullible Skeptic, and a Bayesian “Hard-Nosed Skeptic” Reanalysis of the ANDROMEDA-SHOCK Trial

In a recent blog post, Bayesian icon David Spiegelhalter proposes a new analysis of the results from the ANDROMEDA-SHOCK randomized clinical trial. This trial was published in JAMA under the informative title “Effect of a Resuscitation Strategy Targeting Peripheral Perfusion Status vs Serum Lactate Levels on 28-Day Mortality Among Patients With Septic Shock”. In JAMA, the authors summarize their findings…

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Misconception: The Relative Belief Ratio Equals the Marginal Likelihood

The Misconception The relative belief ratio (e.g., Evans 2015, Horwich 1982/2016) equals the marginal likelihood. The Correction The relative belief ratio is proportional to the marginal likelihood. Dividing two marginal likelihoods (i.e., computing a Bayes factor) cancels the constant of proportionality, such that the Bayes factor equals the ratio of two complementary relative belief ratios (Evans 2015, p.109, proposition 4.3.1).…

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Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence in the FLASH Trial: A Bayesian Reanalysis

Available on https://psyarxiv.com/4pf9j, this is a comment on a recent article in JAMA (Futier et al., 2020). The multicenter FLASH trial1 concluded that “Among patients at risk of postoperative kidney injury undergoing major abdominal surgery, use of HES [hydroxyethyl starch] for volume replacement therapy compared with 0.9% saline resulted in no significant difference in a composite outcome of death or…

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Rationale and Origin of the One-Sided Bayes Factor Hypothesis Test

The default Bayes factor hypothesis test compares the predictive performance of two rival models, the point-null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis . In the case of the -test, a popular choice for the prior distribution is a Cauchy centered on zero with scale parameter 0.707 (for informed alternatives see Gronau et al., in press). One of the problems with such…

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Follow-up: A Bayesian Perspective on the FDA Guidelines for Adaptive Clinical Trials

In September 2018, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft version of the industry guidance on “Adaptive Designs for Clinical Trials of Drugs and Biologics”. In an earlier blog post we provided some comments from a Bayesian perspective that we also submitted as feedback to the FDA. Two months ago, the FDA released the final version of…

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