If you check http://n4.nabble.com/R-help-f789696.html
you will note that this thread has the largest number of read since years. Looks like an encouragement to Mark to keep the mentioned CRAN document updated. To add a more serious note to my sarcastic comments earlier: I don't think the FDA or our national agencies in Europe are to blame. I know that they have eminent statisticians there who know what they are talking of and are much more flexible than the culprits. The people to blame for the "Nobody got fired for using SAS" attitude are reviewers and bosses with mainly medical background who make decisions. It the difference in the use of the term "validated" which leads to confusion. A method is considered "validated" in medicine when it has been compared with a gold standard and is non-inferior within reasonable limits. For example, in the diagnosis of a gastric ulcer gastroscopy is the gold standard, and cheaper or less invasive tests are measured against that. However, sometimes gold standards are the easy way out to avoid litigation, and statistical evidence against these is brushed aside. Think of year it needed to accept the Australian bush doctor's evidence that the bacteria Helicobactor pylori is a main determinant for gastric ulcers; everyone "knew" that ulcers were caused by stress alone. Or gastric emptying: the "gold standard" is (was?) the use of a radioactive marker that was recorded after a meal. Since radioactivity cannot rise out of nothing, it was a well known fact that stomach content always goes down after a meal. After people started measuring the real volume of the liquid in the stomach with MRI imaging, it came out that the content INCREASED after the meal due to strong gastric secretion. Despite visible evidence from the images, the increase was considered "not validated", because is was in contradiction of the gold standard. "Validated" in medicine means: Some well-known person has made a publication on the subject. He or she may be right, but not always. Mention the word three times in a discussion, and my blood pressure is at 200 mmHg My message: If you hear "not validated" or "validated", question it. Dieter -- View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Use-of-R-in-clinical-trials-tp1559402p1562982.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
