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Good evening, everyone. I just like to note here this evening, I'm Jim Olson.
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I'm senior counsel in the primary care CDU.
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And I, along with me coordinating the clinical statistics, the clinical trials module this week, I'd like to welcome Professor David Ferguson.
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Okay. So this is what happens next to each of the officers for about five years.
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I still can't remember the name, but I was thinking, I'm afraid I'm not going to see David Ferguson.
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If he'd like to give us a really interesting talk about selection bias and cluster randomised trials at deep deny.
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First a met in Aberdeen. David then worked as a health economist in the Health Services and Health
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Economics Research Unit and then he moved to York A in the Centre for Economics,
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and then he moved to be director of the York Clinical Trials Unit.
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So he's our method of this now rather than I kept him, if that's what you call himself.
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Everybody heaved a sigh of relief about what would be on the methodology and I'd on.
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Thanks very much. Okay.
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Still said I'm going to talk to you about selection bias that occurs in a significant proportion
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of cluster randomised controlled trials and finish with some ways of trying to prevent this.
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But before I do, I'll remind you what happens in individual randomised trials and that's why it's been we
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know there's been a problem and individual randomised trials for many years that there's a
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potential that the randomisation can be subversive and we try and prevent this by ensuring
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that randomisation is concealed as third party to avoid this problem of selection bias.
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So I'll give you some kind of illustration of why this need try and do such a randomisation came from.
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And this is a classic case for kind of Shelton College back in the mid 1990 when I
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did a meta analysis and looked at the effect sizes of trials by their allocation,
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concealment status. And so you can see that here in adequate randomised trials,
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which they did with people not having public access to the allocation in this set of
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about 41% increase in effect size compared with the adequate method of randomisation.
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And the shown for that time said that an adequate method of randomisation was to use opaque concealed envelopes,
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which is still used in about 10 to 20% of randomised control, to still use opaque sealed envelope which are absolutely fine.
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If you ever see a trial that uses a sealed envelope to the model of the number or not to trial to uselessly ignore it.
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And this is a case that when we were both in Aberdeen for a large randomised
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controlled trial that will cost the taxpayer over million pounds in 1990s money,
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and that was £1 million of funding worth something.
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And we, after about 200 patients were found to be subverted and at the time of five or more centres.
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And what happened was that the clinician would approach patients, get their consent to take part in the study,
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and they had a box filled number of envelopes and what they were supposed to have had a top envelope and open the envelopes and and within
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the envelope would be the allocation of whether that person would get open surgery or lack of access to the statistician at the time.
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Well, after about two of the patients was doing some type of training and.
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That's right. And for some reason, you compare the two treatment groups and their overall age,
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and you can say that the experiment was on average for years and different controls, which obviously shouldn't happen because of randomisation.
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And then what he did was he did it by centre.
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And you can see if you look at the centre, for example, the average age of experimental patients was 33 years compared to 59 a control group.
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Now you don't need to spend five years of medical school to work out.
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If you're 33, you're out because there's going to be a [INAUDIBLE] of a lot better than 50, 69.
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And so how did they do it? This is one of the centres and the numbers are the numbers were envelope, the envelopes were numbered.
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So that person in the fifth envelope should get this patient recruited.
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So this should be a perfect correlation between the patient centre number recruited and the envelope sequence.
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And in this particular sense you can say to the envelope number 12, there's this perfect correlation.
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But after once we get beyond that, what did the envelope?
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As you look at that point and button number 26 there, recruiting.
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There were papers
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in the sense that said there are a number that's in advance and then put them the younger patients.
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So 75, for example, was put in all men under the age of 40 in the intervention group,
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an old men over the age of 40 and the control group and says, I'm completely biased.
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A colleague of mine who did a study in this area often hear it.
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What she did was took all the Vanderbilt controlled trials published in one year in the main medical journal, the medical journal from jail, etc.,
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and clocked them inadequate or adequate and she inadequate concealment of even opaque envelopes 99% of file she classed as being
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inadequate all use of fake field envelopes adequate ones with it used a web based or telephone randomisation was difficult,
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and she basically found that the p value for those files that envelopes that
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2.0 to compare just got over 0.05 for those that will use adequate charts.
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So this is the plot of the study. You can see the.
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So if you can see the adequate ones, the dark line that can see and this is about 5%, you see about half the trials are statistically significant,
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half and not just about what you would expect if you but if you look at the inadequate one six,
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the orange you like see more trials that are that are statistically significant compared with the adequately concealed one.
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Now, the only reasonable assumption is pattern here for people.
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The envelopes have been opened in advance or people are filling the allocation
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because I can't think of any reason why people who choose to use sealed,
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opaque envelopes to conceal the allocation are able to pick interventions of more likely to succeed than people who use the more secure method.
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It doesn't make sense. This is a masterful design.
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What she did was took a dozen systematic view of randomised controlled trials that all published in BMJ Jarman and 2012 and said.
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And then what she did was extracted the data from the component trials, the systematic review.
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So the first one she got the ten papers and then what she did was that she was a matter analysis of age between the two groups,
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both with age should be what you should get within a mention of age.
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In randomised controlled trial you should get zero heterogeneity because the knowledge we know,
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we know the difference between groups is true, which is no age difference through randomisation.
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Those should get no heterogeneity and also we should get no difference.
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So if you look at the first one, that's the narrative by the IWF there is enormous a 4% to little difference and
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I think it's different eight that's less important than the heterogeneity.
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In fact if you look at have that for the study that for hideous and it's the only four for trials
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showed zero hitches in that rough full meta analysis that have shown selection narrative.
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So all those match analysis contain trials but the allocations have been subverted as affecting baseline.
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And even if those for one of them the age imbalance at this particular trial that is populated by a host of the trial.
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So yeah, that's a very big problem.
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So the problem is individually randomised trials is really quite widespread.
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It's damaging metal analysis. See, this is a trial where well I don't know about you guys,
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but I've read my medical journal with trials and then mainly just to sort of pick it out if taking one to say this is what this was one along.
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Yeah, this is a block randomised 54 patient fleet block with seven randomisation centres,
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blocks of four cartons of duty, content to cars marked with house officer, all with nurse.
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Each card is placed into a envelope and sealed. The block was shuffled and after shuffling the block faces in a box.
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So this is a trial with which problem? That way if you don't get it because the statistician on this job didn't observe it either.
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The editor of the Journal and the BMJ didn't sit and neither did the statistical editor didn't see it all.
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That is blindingly bloody obvious when when you actually block randomisation block for stuff side by side.
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So the imbalance can only be half the block size because we've got dodgy business going on.
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Southampton V Sheffield how much we can't.
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It's impossible and arithmetically impossible for that to happen naturally either.
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The lead author who ignored me then I've got to stop fishing on the paper as well on basis of
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the lead author sometimes ignores it because I think if some of the statistics are ignored,
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if I wrote fascinating, ordinary,
well, so on.
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So because there might be a reasonable explanation for I couldn't understand what was a reasonable explanation that I got long time ago.
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This just happened just as the largest trial in this area.
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That lesson I'm a bit of an internal medicine because [INAUDIBLE] have never published anything about attention,
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but they should publish this complete twaddle. So what is it?
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So we randomised 450 women and over 900 women to undergraduate students to an intervention to try and prevent them.
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Would you say they still haven't been sexually assaulted in the first year at university and the intervention clearly appears it worked.
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So in the intervention group 5% were raped compared to 10% in the control group.
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So halving of the intervention. And then so what's the problem you saw in randomisation was performing 70 blocks of two with the use of online tool
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randomisation that was suffocation code to sign for the 52% control group of 60 for the Prevention Resistance Group.
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See, the problem then were if you don't, the statistician could fit you in the jail.
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They got you've got, what is it three sites block size of two stuff side by side.
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The intervention.
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You can only be in balance by half block size, which is why they can only possibly gain balance across the whole trial by three participants.
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I mean, I've got a level math that surely, you know. That's right.
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And that the site found to have half of two is one, three times one, two, three anyway.
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So 450 to respond to the control group and 464 to resistance.
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So that isn't to me it's what is it, 12.
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Anyway, I did write to actually take it back.
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You're concerned about half of the students on the publish my lecture about this trial.
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And so given that you about that they did a good publisher and the authors responded
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by saying that there were 10 to 1 device in error because they had people misspell,
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you know. So irritatingly, my name gets me stuff quite a lot.
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People from the middle are in the main court with towards the Centre for Progress which donated it.
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And so you can imagine if somebody was told to send in the name, somebody would have written it down,
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told and someone else would have written that order and then they thought they are two different people and randomise.
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And quite a funny that all ten ended up in one group.
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I don't know what your probability of of that happen is pretty remote but anyway that passed.
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So we know and what is run by for a few portion of the person because they were using small block sizes and and envelope.
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And so what about cluster randomisation now.
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Cluster randomisation just to remind everybody what the first got to unit the unit of allocation is something like a hospital or GP practice.
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It might be stored, it might be brought,
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the kind of people in back then you've got the individuals who are associated with that get allocated to the treatment or not.
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You have to run lots of stuff to do that.
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And then the unit of specimen, the outcome assessment is on the on the usually on the patient, the individual patient at the psychiatric cluster.
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And so we've got two elements. We've got potential bias and the actual randomisation to the clusters,
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which is the same as that can happen for individually randomised controlled trial then.
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But we can sort that out that they look out for.
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The next problem of course, which is that tractable is what happens if you have to recruit the participants after you randomise.
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So. Selection bias can be randomised to clusters so long as you've done that properly by an independent person.
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You've got balance about the quality of that. What were all happened to that then?
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What really happened? How the selection occurs is when they start recruiting the patients actually randomise because
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just as individual randomisation is typically because people know the allocation in advance.
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So it's just that because you have two people who know the allocation back to the clinician,
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those allocation who can then select patients to go in for some reason or, or you can have the patient and the patient that is the across allocation.
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So they can volunteer to go in the study directly between the physician.
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So you get clustered. But the first time I sort of tweaked this was back in the nineties when I first met some
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of these people with the health problems on a lot of back been beans and we would
have
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done a pilot very complicated design to my ex boss for my being had followed me around
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New York so I was working with him again and so he loved having very complicated design.
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And this was that the initial design for this trial was a cluster randomised flip flop design.
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And so we did a pilot before we launched the main project check the cockpit design work.
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So we ran the so to show you what happened at those 26 practices with some kind of
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stratification to randomisation bums on the number of the patients in the intervention group.
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Then you see training that was management so that GP's and practice managers would receive some training on how to manage patients with low back pain.
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Basically try and get them to be mobilised as much as possible because lying in bed, much more chronic, like with make it chronic to train those.
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And it's almost obvious in hindsight what would happen if you're telling me about back pain.
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I didn't find patients back and hey presto, that's what they do.
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They identify a lot more patients, the usual category for that problem than usual practice.
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So by recruiting more than 2 to 3 times more patients than the control group.
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And then when you look at the baseline values like Rutland Life Disability School,
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Aberdeen Back Pain Scout and FFO six can see, quote, higher scores of those two is worth and the low score is worth that.
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So you can see the outcome. The main outcome would be the vote in my score.
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So the patient team, before they have a chance to get any kind of advice and treatment that the fact this was a significant work.
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So we have to abandon that trial because it was it was helpful.
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So fortunately, we've done a pilot, so we just then moved on without the cluster element to the study.
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This is the recruitment graph that we saw for the intervention for flu and we can see the old way through was like a double number of recruitment.
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The good the only good thing about this pilot study is it shows that if you teach,
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if you train GP's about a clinical condition, they will recruit more for you.
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So if you want to do it, you do it in a randomised trial in primary care we want to enhance recruitment training and they will recruit a lot more.
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So I wrote a paper about partly about this and suggesting that we should avoid cluster randomisation at all costs.
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And so what I recommend is that is that we should try and do individual randomisation for possible and out of
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these if you've got some contamination and I feel hold ups and if you've got contamination that goes up to 30%,
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it's still more cost cost effective to do the individual randomisation cluster.
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Okay.
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So in 2002, I inherited the trials in York and one of the trials had been done at that time, remember too from before for the cluster run Photoshop.
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And what we want to work is shoulder pain and they we're going to recruit patients who showed randomised
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the general practice trained GP's and then recruit the patients as a group of patients shoulder pain.
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And then we would look at the outcome of training on the GP,
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on the patients outcomes to see if it got better off patients, GP to being trained to deal with.
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Shoulder problem. And so when I joined it, I said, we really need to change the design,
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that the design and in the first place, we need to change the design here because it will be catastrophic.
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So when I go and if it were so chopped off the place up there, Japan obviously would have to contend with the several of them.
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And I couldn't persuade anybody else that we needed to change tack here.
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So we had a first draft committee, steering group steering committee statement of the owners.
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And so at this point, we could see. We have doubled in the chain saying GP so we could double the numbers of patients.
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So at this point I said, look, I know you thought a lot is wrong.
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I don't know. I think psychology helps with that because I think you shouldn't have it.
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If somebody is doing something, it's catastrophic and you've warned them against it.
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And I think it is probably problematic to tell them, I've told you so.
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You're supposed to set you know, you're not supposed to cry over the.
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But I think I can do that. I've heard that.
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Yes, you've got it wrong. We don't know. I may have had an external still.
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Have a quick look. The person from the audience they're not have external statistician that who said
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we
clinch an argument with that difference isn't statistically significant.
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My account for that was I told the story of the jumbo jet that flew over Indonesia in mid seventies when
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the volcano was going off and it flew it flew through the volcanic ash and all four engines will come out.
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So this is the analogy that you're positing said aeroplane 50,000 feet,
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all the engines have shut down and the co-pilot comes on and says, we've had a little trouble.
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All our engines have lost power, but don't worry, we've lost a thousand people.
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That's not an awfully significant. My view, if I was a passenger, is in about half an hour, an hour, it's going to become bloody.
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I have no idea that somebody has won it. At least one of the engines restarted.
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Fortunately, they got three of them off in one state.
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But I would say that it's not that it may not be statistically significant, but it's going to be if we carry on and we catch up not to the authentic.
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I told you so then I didn't tell you that at this point it was too late.
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Now we are discussing.
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So of course that's what's going on.
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We need more evidence. You go on about you think that is probably a one off.
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So a group was got to try and prove that this is a major problem.
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So we did a systematic review of well first published in the BMJ last year in the Journal, met us for five years from January 7th, October 2002.
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And so what you find we found that on the first cluster trial,
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about 40% was showing evidence of selection bias would tell by imbalances in their recruitment values or in covariate imbalances,
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all based on covaxin policy. And in fact,
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that's an underestimate because we came across another trial that published a secondary paper after they published a paper in
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The Lancet after was published that demonstrated data and admitted they had a selection bias of 40% actually in the letter.
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But you know, both those data a long, long time ago, so they do things differently depending on who said this happened.
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Unfortunately not so again, when doctors flipped the switch published in 2008, another that and where are we.
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Yes about 35 for trial that then showed recruitment bias is possible at five.
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Does they have clear evidence in that in the paper that there was recruitment by more than
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a thousand to the more recent cluster trials and she found huge problems of the 23 trial.
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She looked at about 48% of a high risk of selection bias.
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Now, something else she did was what I showed you before an individual randomised trial.
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She did looked at the heterogeneity again.
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She extracted all the baseline age of all of the 23 cluster trial and then looked to see if the baseline imbalances and what heterogeneity was said.
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We have one, two, three, four, five, six,
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seven plus the graph where the statistically significant imbalance in eight and look at
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hatch American not 3% now remember these are corrected to remember we're looking at.
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Limber up the knowledge to hear.
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This should be no different. They should all be. The differences make an individual trial that physically fit.
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And may even be statistically significant in my chance. You wouldn't expect this.
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As I said, this is what you should be fed.
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This is the individuals and the lifestyle that are not even myself taking the stage at them for the same issues.
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So to put it ten time, this is what we've got to do a better analysis of individual randomised trials.
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This is what you expect to say i squared 0%.
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We have a tiny, tiny difference which is nowhere near.
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We have two trials that have significant imbalances.
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No one goes a long way, really goes with what? Which is about what to expect.
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So this is what this is the difference.
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We would hope to see if we'd done the task, but we're not doing this trial with individually randomised trial yet and we have an appalling situation.
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I'll go through a quote, another case study. This is published a couple of years ago and got a lot of it, got a lot of press attention.
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I was able to use scientific contact information for Common Output published
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and I gave the new scientist a journalist saying how awful it was to publish.
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Unfortunately, she published.
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She gave a synopsis of the trial and said there was some controversy about it, but the conference is just me ranting to an hour ago.
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So this is I mean, this is to stop trying to stop teenage girls getting pregnant.
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So the of the randomised schools to have identified about 50 and they get randomised to get a baby simulator.
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So the girl has the weekend with a baby that cries at regular intervals, keeps up all night, nothing changed and fed all the cows.
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How anybody would have a baby knows exactly what it sounds like.
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And so the heart of all of this is supposed to put the the the mothers are the potential as it's the young women of getting himself pregnant.
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Now what is so statistically significant, different half of like 1.5,
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but it actually shows that the risk of getting pregnant in the intervention doubled the risk of the control of the birth.
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Then what we got had a baby compared to 4% control group and they did all lots of fancy statistics, very healthy babies, about half the p value.
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But the difference is, I don't know what a block binomial model is for anyway.
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We do that for all that us or looking at high quality data.
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But do we believe it? Don't believe a word of it.
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It's just, you know, statistics are meaningless if you've got awful data looking over data.
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This is selection bias on a massive scale. What the NHS thinks, and I think it was a baby doll simulation might actually increase pregnancy rates.
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They've gone to NHS choices.
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You'll find that this sort of study design with some sort of statisticians, the audience won't go to that paper, do some calculation.
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We've got that wrong, actually, but that's a minor problem. We've got the sample. So I've talked to a lot of it.
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I tend to look at sample size calculations very easy as why I do, but I'm not going to pay attention quickly.
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Do them. Because if the sample size, if you can't get sample size calculations wrong, which is right,
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which is a piece of cake, you can do it and you have to write just about a tiny bit.
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But then if they don't get that right, you know, then we get anything else like that.
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Okay. But this is a good study design on a sample size.
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So there we have it. Thank you. So I went to I decided to look for higher soul and more thought of some sort of evidence base.
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And so I naturally take that email for the Daily Mail Lifelike Baby Doll
designed in 30 days, just from having children actually very pregnant today,
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quite intensive search of size, attention to details when they were looking after the dolls, encourage them to have a baby.
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No, it doesn't cause a trial to say anything of the kind.
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But is it true? Well,
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it must be true because NHS choices on the Daily Mail scientists and they both say
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that giving infants simulated teenage girls increased their risk of pregnancy.
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I like to I have no shares in infant simulators.
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I think that probably don't work. But I certainly this shows that I don't have shares in that and I don't care one way or another about them except.
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Well, I mean, I suppose in some way I'll stop wasting money on them.
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We think let's have a look at well, I won't get into the sample size so that you do that yourself.
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This is what. So that's a bit of console time. So they want to buy 57 pills, put it on control to protect themselves.
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Right now, first thing we look at is the eligible students, because the proportion of the population in all these girls,
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3150 girls compared to have one of them girls that is you balanced population.
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If you if you include all those girls and intention st analysis you get them but estimate the truth
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so they didn't do that there's enough to go to you want to take part but only half equivalent.
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So even if they even if you've got the same something proportion in both total imagine doing it now imagine trying to publish an individual
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randomised control trust where 50% of your of your randomised samples are locked out and then you have 58% in the in the intervention group.
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But we have an 8% difference of quite a large difference in the number of girls in two groups.
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So this eight that immediately introduces selection but over and above any selection bias and then observable characteristics both.
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Based on that, you probably taught an office so I teach my students don't have a baseline character
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that baseline comparison to the main test what's the argument but there's not that.
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Well, we know the knowledge. So if you get the gist, the significant difference difference.
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So I'm changing my mind on the type of work and I feel like, oh, all the time about how we should pivot.
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The pattern based on variables are not the reason most people do it.
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Fact randomisation is work to look for selection, but I'm slowly gravitating to that.
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This is in The Lancet. So we've got our P values, but I've got my friendly statistician to my let's have a look.
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But this is trying to look at what type of main students what the numbers proportion of difference is huge the p values of scale.
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If we look at this now the these are teenage girls getting pregnant so we can expect socio
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demographic characteristics to be a high predictor of chances of getting pregnant as a teenager.
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And if we look at the factors, demographic P values, got it while we look at it.
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So we look at the lowest proportion of socioeconomic factors.
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We have 13 5%.
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So that in the intervention group, 13% of the girls are from the lowest 10% of socioeconomic status,
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compared with only 5% of the of the control group that we look at 17 now an alpha somebody and so you might
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do a propensity score matching you might or whatever stuff to try and control for observable imbalances.
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But I can bet there's a caveat in that that is not measured,
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but not that you are not controlling for in your analysis that gets rid of this horrendous bias.
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So because of the crude but we are missing 66 missing we're missing ten in 66 girls in the control group.
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And these are predominantly from from socioeconomic group.
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So that's a higher rate of pregnancies.
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So if the pregnancy rate was 50% or greater among these missing girls, then there's no difference between the two groups.
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Now it's 50% pregnancy, very likely. I did try and look for pregnancy rate of girls in Western Australia.
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Teenage girls as far as I can find on the internet. There's no routine data published between date.
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I don't know what you need to get my social status.
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However, I was work on a trial for the AMP trial where we were randomising pregnant teenagers to go to get support from getting pregnant again.
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And the pregnancy rate among that group was 66%. So it can be really quite high in some socioeconomic, but not unlikely.
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So this is the first calculation of this, so that we can target three one,
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3001 and 50 eligible 2100 eligible and simulate a group a difference of 8.45%.
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So we're missing 266 girls because we both applied with the total intention to take three population, figure out 158.45% to get 266.
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And then we can work out if calculation,
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we can then work out the likelihood of what the pregnancy that would have to be to make sure that does not affect all of the simulated interesting.
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If you go to that when they did this calculation, which is wrong, nothing's wrong.
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We can look at that one figure.
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The quote is that the. They expect that to be a 16.8% pregnancy rate.
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And this cohort of girls, that's what the historical data says.
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On average, 64 ex-employees gave that pregnant. That's what they use in some sort of calculation.
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Now the pregnancy rate in the.
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Intervention group. And up was 16.6%.
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Yeah, 60 left in the control group was 16.6%.
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The intervention group was was 15.6%.
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So for the infantry group was 16.6%. So the intervention group, which had the highest compliance rate,
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had a pregnancy rate that was equal to the historical pregnancy rate average, virtually identical.
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The intervention group had a lower pregnancy rate. So why would they why would the intervention so much lower?
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It's because of selection bias. So.
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To symbolise the claustrophobia. A huge proportion, just a child.
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Since I've been working with that, it's terrible. 20 years ago.
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That's still terrible. You still can you still get that baby simulator.
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So if you try, you try to publish a random individual Monsanto trying to into that reject my letter pointing out the problem with this trial.
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I've got no athleticism but in that at least the New England Journal of that so they are but it seems to be I don't know why journals
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publish well high profile journals publish I mean should publish this child should publish as a letter of warning to history.
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This is yet another fact we designed to stop, but we don't publish it, that we can actually take any meaning from them.
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So what should you do about it?
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We should try and do individual randomised to go farther for possible and a lot of people do trust the trial to avoid contamination.
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So when I was sitting on a one of the study board,
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the stated it was the trial which I did my best to stop because they wanted to do cluster randomisation to try and reduce contamination.
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So yeah. So after reducing this pattern thinking patients might talk to each other.
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Well, I don't know about you when I go to my GP. If I go to my GP because I'm ill, I get the GP but I'm waiting for five of of sick people.
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The last thing I do is talk to not because I'm particularly uncertain which I am,
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but because I've got the lurking and I don't want to come out with what I've got and what they've got as well as I sit well away from them.
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So I talk to the best patients.
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They wanted to do just that.
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I said, Well, anybody who's had any had a child knows the the social group of young mothers is not wanting from their GP practice.
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It tends to be women better than 50 classes. Or that's the group that my wife had as a sort of group that came from lots of different GP practices.
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That contamination is an overrated reason for using cluster randomisation.
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So here's an example of what they wanted to do, but that is some kind of public health intervention from 1970,
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and they wanted the heart to run twice 2000 participants instead of 1282 because of clustering.
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So another way of looking at the randomised 2000 people,
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one than an individual randomised trial and said what could we have detected so that we could have detected a 7% reduction in smoking.
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Right. So let's assume that is a 9% reduction in smoking,
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but we actually saw a seventh reduction that because 20% of the sample contaminated and that's assumes
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the contamination is as effective as being delivered by the health promotion field the same time.
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So that's not likely to happen in particular set of the cup point.
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So if you get if you are pretty sure if you get contamination above 30%, then you can trust the randomisation to avoid the contamination effect.
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So is it possible when we looked at this 24th draft,
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only the third individual randomised trial and the responses to this technique will also comply, which causes best case analysis?
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What's the instrumental variable? Technically,
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00:41:49,610
using the RANDOMISATION instrument that can give you a high estimate that if not an unbiased dilution effect of the mass contamination and again,
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it has the same powers and I treat it as a as an ordinary analysis if the contamination is central.
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So if you still want to go out first and three randomised before randomisation so that you could use it to address the trial on that.
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So what you would do is you would approach the schools or 57 schools before you randomise them just as you would do it, an individual randomisation.
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You would contact the girls and their parents to get consent to go in trial.
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Then once you've got consent, they will 3000 odd thousand and 5000 or so altogether, you might say, okay, 3000 of them in that test.
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Once you've got the consent in the bag, you've then randomised the schools and those girls consented in the intervention.
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Schools are invited to participate in banged on about the here and the UK being which would have done that.
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What we could have done is identify all people with back pain in the fifth vote and ask them if they
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would want to take part study where we observe that the severity of their back pain over time and yeah,
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chunk of them would have said yes once we've got them in, we would have them at the bypass and then followed them up the shoulder.
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Pain trial. We couldn't have done that because it was an incident condition, so you couldn't so you can do it with prevalent conditions.
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So the pregnancy stage is a condition that's going to happen.
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So you can recruit the girls a long time before the event occurs.
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But if you've got five shoulder pain, you need a treating there and then you can't do prevalent recruitment.
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So the two approaches could deal with it. First, you can try to match the person doing the recruiting.
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So a trial of mental health intervention to try and improve the care of patients with depression and train the GP receptionist to attend,
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to speak patients,
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to come in and to identify those that may be suffering from depression and then ask them to go to trial before they from that same the same technique.
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So the hope was by not by using a receptionist to do that, it would alleviate the.
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But then they couldn't do enough to show off and showed us the trial time.
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We could we could have done that. What actually cast aspersions on the people during the show came from some ways because what they did,
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they originally proposed to MRC this cunning design as a split prop design because basically you randomised
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to a group interventions to check whether treatment by changing GP is is better than an infection.
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But we can't compare that because these guys, as we can see on that recruitment graph,
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these guys are recruiting different sets of patients more to perform a certain equipment set.
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So what we do is a patient pitches of cells and at this point they're then randomised to see their
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GP or randomise to go and see the mythologies because the rheumatologists are doing the training.
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So you would expect if the GP you want to get the GP capability dealing with this problem centrefold and the control group,
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you do the same thing and get you involved in talking to right now if the GP care is the same because we've been told it's an intervention group,
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these guys that the outcomes are the same.
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And also the fact in that group is another effect which is that the GP is as good as the rheumatologist anyway.
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Both rheumatologists and trainees not adding anything on to his effort is is equal to still equal.
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But but what you'd expect of the intervention was was better in the GP care would be better.
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That is a positive result that the GP thought during the training were.
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Okay. So when is it not a problem?
392
00:46:17,250 --> 00:46:23,510
So it's not a problem if you if you say the allocation is a lot, if you alter behaviour.
393
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:32,729
So for example in the U.S. they did under my hospital a year, two different countries pay different, different hours of work.
394
00:46:32,730 --> 00:46:41,250
So junior doctors were on what you do on long hours or the hours were curtailed and the intervention groups that worked on that 40,
395
00:46:41,250 --> 00:46:47,760
50 hours a week and the outcome with mortality in the hospital.
396
00:46:48,070 --> 00:46:51,140
And so in that case, patients would be sent to hospitals.
397
00:46:51,810 --> 00:46:58,200
The patients don't know the hospital visits. It's unlikely patients who get referred know it by whoever is the first hospital,
398
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:04,060
by the knowledge, even if they knew that the doctors are being paid that way.
399
00:47:04,110 --> 00:47:05,600
But that's in light of the fact.
400
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:16,050
Similarly, if you run out of randomised compulsive flu vaccinations to try and reduce flu related mortality among their patients,
401
00:47:16,350 --> 00:47:23,559
again, patients are unlikely to know that happening and patients are unlikely to be admitted to not be in this hospital.
402
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:34,470
On the knowledge that that there's a trial for that and likely selection bias, this is possible and very enlightening so.
403
00:47:38,170 --> 00:47:44,950
So to sum up so that the boss said this is a huge problem, individual and box office continues to be a problem.
404
00:47:45,850 --> 00:47:51,580
I think the problem, worse and worse, the staff and general staff seem to do it.
405
00:47:52,210 --> 00:48:04,620
I think I look back and I remember the last people who got them off in order to get out of the money that comes along in the work and
406
00:48:04,630 --> 00:48:16,690
plus the staff and was run by politicians and all they had to do was grinding on about how to deal with people cluster level techniques,
407
00:48:16,690 --> 00:48:22,070
frailty, analysis, and all the stuff that normal people like me don't understand.
408
00:48:22,170 --> 00:48:29,950
I think it doesn't matter, you know, if not, if you still doing a biased cluster chart, does it matter which technique you used to do the analysis?
409
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:36,460
It isn't an answer that anywhere near the truth you catch up to question.