Bayesian adaptive clinical trials: promise and pitfalls

This afternoon I'm giving a talk at the Houston INFORMS chapter entitled "Bayesian adaptive clinical trials: promise and pitfalls."

When I started working in adaptive clinical trials, I was very excited about the potential of such methods. The clinical trial methods most commonly used are very crude, and there's plenty of room for improvement.

Over time I became concerned about overly complex methods, methods which were good for academic publication but may not be best for patients. Such methods are extremely time-consuming to develop and may not perform as well in practice as simpler methods.

There's a great deal of opportunity between the extremes, methods that are more sophisticated than the status quo without being unnecessarily complex.