How to test hypotheses if you must
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 18, 2026

Establishment of Rat Models Mimicking Gender-affirming Hormone Therapies
Published on: January 10, 2025
1ICON Adaptive Trials Innovation Centre, Icon Plc, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK.
Abstract:
Drug development is not the only industrial-scientific enterprise subject to government regulations. In some fields of ecology and environmental sciences, the application of statistical methods is also regulated by ordinance. Over the past 20years, ecologists and environmental scientists have argued against an unthinking application of null hypothesis significance tests. More recently, Canadian ecologists have suggested a new approach to significance testing, taking account of the costs of both type I and type II errors. In this paper, we investigate the implications of this for testing in drug development and demonstrate that its adoption leads directly to the likelihood principle and Bayesian approaches.
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