Reflections on the design and analysis of clinical trials and meta-analyses in the 1970s and 1980s

摘要

I had finished a complete draft of the paper in 1975. I felt that what it had to say about randomised evidence was important, so I wanted it taken ser- iously, and to be published with the endorsement of the Medical Research Council (MRC). However, some on the MRC leukaemia and cancer trial com- mittees did not want it to be published, as it implied (correctly) that the trials they were then doing wouldn’t give reliable answers. They explicitly and unpleasantly blocked the paper, and later managed to get me removed from the relevant committees because of my continuing concerns about their trial methodology and, in particular, the wholly inad- equate trial sizes that inevitably followed.