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Your point is well taken, but I doubt the casual reader would make the distinction that you do. And in regard to Covid deaths in the study, the people who ran i
by vannevar 5y ago
Your point is well taken, but I doubt the casual reader would make the distinction that you do. And in regard to Covid deaths in the study, the people who ran it were well aware that the small number of deaths were not, by themselves, enough to establish efficacy. But in combination with the numbers for severe illness (2 in the vaccinated vs 106 for the placebo group) and everything we understood about how the disease kills, I would argue that the study does in fact overwhelmingly support the conclusion that the vaccine prevents death, just as we have since confirmed.
- emtel 5y agoI 100% agree that if you have proof of efficacy against severe disease, its reasonable to assume efficacy against death. In fact I think it would be absurd not to. But, the usual rules of the game (and certainly the rules the FDA plays by as I understand it) are that you either reject the null hypothesis with a sufficient degree of statistical significance or you don't, and if you don't, you haven't "proved" anything. So if someone claims that studies proved something according to those rules, its fair to call them out if there was in fact no proof. To your first point: Yes, 99% of the population does not understand statistics, null-hypothesis testing, what "under-powered" means, etc. But, I think we under-estimate the ability of the public to understand good explanations of these topics. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I believe the median reader of a page like the linked article can grasp explanations of these topics even if they are initially somewhat ignorant of them. And, while I can't prove it, I believe that the most epistemically rigorous rebuttals of what we feel are false claims are ultimately going to be the most durable.