New therapeutics for non-small-cell lung cancer and smoking cessation

摘要

Schmid etal.'s (2020) retrospective study analysing novel therapeutics for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the elderly population deserved comment.First, post hoc (retrospective) analyses only allow to generate hypotheses. Did the authors pre-registrated their hypotheses (e.g. on the Open Science Framework) to avoid p-hacking and even p-HARk-ing (hypotheses after the results are known)? Indeed, considering the latter, the choice of a 70 years threshold is questioning. Further, it cannot be valid: age must be tested as a continuous variable.