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Comment by seemslegit | Hacker News Reader

Not really.

But it doesn't mean that drug doesn't work -- it means that the sample was too small to say that it works. If the sample were 100,000, then that would mean that it doesn't work. This was around 225, which isn't tiny, but given that we are well-endowed with people dying of COVID who would rather not, it makes sense to do more testing. Which they call for.

> it means that the sample was too small to say that it works.

If it works! If it does not, in fact, work, no sample of any size will show that it works.

Didn't say it doesn't make sense to do more testing, but relaxing your reasoning standard in emergencies is a bad idea.

I'm picturing the passengers on the Titanic standing around, refusing to move until presented with an option proven valid to p < 0.95.

I'm picturing the Feds and States shelling out desperately needed money to purchase an almost useless drug because the people on the Titanic are desperate for anything rather than the drowning.

If it does indeed turn out to be useless (which is far from obvious at the moment), it'll be dropped, and not much money will have been spent.

It's unfortunate, but a lot of what we're trying right now will turn out to be useless. One or two recent analyses suggest that the (far more expensive) lockdowns might turn out to have been almost useless. That doesn't mean that trying them was the wrong thing to do.

We're living in unusually uncertain times.

It is like the passengers discussing if they must carry a box with 10 pounds of oranges in each life boat, find some paddles, a plastic cover, or paint the Eyes of Horus in them before launching them.

The first three look useful, but I'm not sure if they improve the chance of survival too much. You need some time to find them and enough room in the boat, so it is a trade off if they are useful at all.

They said "looking at more results," not "relax our reasoning standards."

Yes, you should not look at any result in an emergency you wouldn't otherwise - in fact you should probably only increase scrutiny given how much incentive there is to merely get a headline with your drug mentioned as a potential covid19 cure.

The OP is basically arguing for a "something must be done and this is something" reasoning.

There's always "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas." :-)

Yes there is. Not having effective options against a new virus is the null hypothesis. So by all means do whatever research has promising leads but don't lower burden of proof for accepting something as clinically effective.

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