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Measurement is a complicated but very necessary task. Many indices have been created in an effort to define the quality of knowledge produced but they have attracted strong criticism, having become synonymous with individualism, competition…
Research grants have played an important role in seeding and promoting fundamental research projects worldwide. There is a growing demand for developing and delivering scientific influence analysis as a service on research grant…
A randomized trial allows estimation of the causal effect of an intervention compared to a control in the overall population and in subpopulations defined by baseline characteristics. Often, however, clinical questions also arise regarding…
Leveraging external controls -- relevant individual patient data under control from external trials or real-world data -- has the potential to reduce the cost of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) while increasing the proportion of trial…
Background: Pairwise and network meta-analyses using fixed effect and random effects models are commonly applied to synthesise evidence from randomised controlled trials. The models differ in their assumptions and the interpretation of the…
While there exists a large amount of literature on the general challenges of and best practices for trustworthy online A/B testing, there are limited studies on sample size estimation, which plays a crucial role in trustworthy and efficient…
Balancing influential covariates is crucial for valid treatment comparisons in clinical studies. While covariate-adaptive randomization is commonly used to achieve balance, its performance can be inadequate when the number of baseline…
When designing and evaluating an experiment or observational study, it is useful to have a realistic hypothesis regarding the average treatment effect. We present an approach to conceptualizing this average by first considering a…
Discontinuities can be fairly arbitrary but also cause a significant impact on outcomes in larger systems. Indeed, their arbitrariness is why they have been used to infer causal relationships among variables in numerous settings. Regression…
Emergent patterns of collective attention towards scientists and their research may function as a proxy for scientific impact which traditionally is assessed via committees that award prizes to scientists. Therefore it is crucial to…
Credible causal effect estimation requires treated subjects and controls to be otherwise similar. In observational settings, such as analysis of electronic health records, this is not guaranteed. Investigators must balance background…
The exponentially growing number of scientific papers stimulates a discussion on the interplay between quantity and quality in science. In particular, one may wonder which publication strategy may offer more chances of success: publishing…
For randomized controlled trials to be conclusive, it is important to set the target sample size accurately at the design stage. Comparing two normal populations, the sample size calculation requires specification of the variance other than…
Percentage coefficient (bp) has emerged in recent publications as an additional and alternative estimator of effect size for regression analysis. This paper retraces the theory behind the estimator. It's posited that an estimator must first…
Meta-analyses are commonly performed based on random-effects models, while in certain cases one might also argue in favour of a common-effect model. One such case may be given by the example of two "study twins" that are performed according…
Empirical science needs to be based on facts and claims that can be reproduced. This calls for replicating the studies that proclaim the claims, but practice in most fields still fails to implement this idea. When such studies emerged in…
Innovation is the direct intended product of certain styles in research, but not of others. Fundamental conflicts between descriptive vs inferential statistics, deductive vs inductive hypothesis testing, and exploratory vs pre-planned…
Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information…
The publication process both determines which research receives the most attention, and influences the supply of research through its impact on researchers' private incentives. We introduce a framework to study optimal publication decisions…
It is standard practice in online retail to run pricing experiments by randomizing at the article-level, i.e. by changing prices of different products to identify treatment effects. Due to customers' cross-price substitution behavior, such…