Ethics of clinical trials from bayesian perspective: Medical decision making should use posteriors, not priors

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7404.1456-a

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Stephen Frankel (stephen.frankel@bristol.ac.uk), professor of epidemiology and public health,
Jonathan Sterne, reader in medical statistics,
Shah Ebrahim, professor in epidemiology of ageing

Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PR

EDITOR—The article by Lilford is a curious contribution to the debate about recruitment to randomised trials.1 While each sentiment seems, individually, to be reasonable, in composite they lead to the dangerous conclusion that patients should be denied the evidence that protects them against prejudice based medicine.

It is remarkable that a piece apparently arguing from the viewpoint of the Reverend Bayes omits the key feature of bayesian inference—that …