[Medicine and statistics].
Doctors as researchers often resort to hypothesis testing and confidence intervals in the statistical analysis of study results. On the one hand, the use of statistical software has made this task easier. On the other hand, this has not contributed to neither a better understanding of statistical concepts nor to a seminal cooperation between doctors and statisticians. This note shows that the classical statistical theory, also called frequentist or Fisherian, offers probability statements that are very indirect ones. Bayesian statistics, on the other hand, gives a probability statement which is a more direct answer to the research question. Of course, this latter approach would hardly be considered without a close cooperation with an statistician. An improvement in the meaning of the probability statements may be seen as a gain in quality. An effective cooperation with statisticians, an issue that is more ethical than methodological, is directed to achieving a research of a better quality, so avoiding the scandal of poor medical research.
Albers
M
M
Departamento de Cirurgia, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo.
Pereira
C A
CA
D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine; D013223:Statistics as Topic
Medicina e estatística.