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Comment
. 2022 Mar;48(3):374-375.
doi: 10.1007/s00134-021-06602-z. Epub 2021 Dec 17.

Pick your prior: scepticism about sceptical prior beliefs

Harm-Jan de Grooth  1 , Paul Elbers  2
Affiliations
Comment

Pick your prior: scepticism about sceptical prior beliefs

Harm-Jan de Grooth et al. Intensive Care Med. 2022 Mar.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

Both authors declare to have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The relationship between the prior probability and the posterior probability of clinically important 90-day mortality benefit for the COVID STEROID 2 trial. The prior distribution was prespecified as a normal distribution with mean 0 and a standard deviation (SD) of 0.15 on the log odds scale. This corresponds to a 28% prior probability of ‘clinically significant benefit’, defined as an absolute risk reduction of 2% points or better. With this prior distribution and the trial results (without adjusting for stratification variables), the posterior probability of clinically important benefit is 68%. If the sceptical prior distribution is defined so that there is a 10% prior probability of clinically important benefit (by changing the SD of the sceptical prior to 0.068), the posterior probability of clinically important benefit decreases to 26%
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Choice of priors: how much scepticism is appropriate?
    Granholm A, Munch MW, Møller MH, Lange T, Perner A. Granholm A, et al. Intensive Care Med. 2022 Mar;48(3):372-373. doi: 10.1007/s00134-021-06613-w. Epub 2022 Jan 13. Intensive Care Med. 2022. PMID: 35024884 No abstract available.

Comment on

  • Dexamethasone 12 mg versus 6 mg for patients with COVID-19 and severe hypoxaemia: a pre-planned, secondary Bayesian analysis of the COVID STEROID 2 trial.
    Granholm A, Munch MW, Myatra SN, Vijayaraghavan BKT, Cronhjort M, Wahlin RR, Jakob SM, Cioccari L, Kjær MN, Vesterlund GK, Meyhoff TS, Helleberg M, Møller MH, Benfield T, Venkatesh B, Hammond NE, Micallef S, Bassi A, John O, Jha V, Kristiansen KT, Ulrik CS, Jørgensen VL, Smitt M, Bestle MH, Andreasen AS, Poulsen LM, Rasmussen BS, Brøchner AC, Strøm T, Møller A, Khan MS, Padmanaban A, Divatia JV, Saseedharan S, Borawake K, Kapadia F, Dixit S, Chawla R, Shukla U, Amin P, Chew MS, Wamberg CA, Gluud C, Lange T, Perner A. Granholm A, et al. Intensive Care Med. 2022 Jan;48(1):45-55. doi: 10.1007/s00134-021-06573-1. Epub 2021 Nov 10. Intensive Care Med. 2022. PMID: 34757439 Free PMC article. Clinical Trial.

References

    1. Granholm A, Munch MW, Myatra SN, et al. Dexamethasone 12 mg versus 6 mg for patients with COVID-19 and severe hypoxaemia: a pre-planned, secondary Bayesian analysis of the COVID STEROID 2 trial. Intensive Care Med. 2021 doi: 10.1007/s00134-021-06573-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Young PJ, Nickson CP, Perner A. When should clinicians act on non-statistically significant results from clinical trials? JAMA. 2020;323:2256. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.3508. - DOI - PubMed

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