A randomized controlled trial is viewed as the golden standard in medical research, particularly as it relates to treatments or interventions. But there may be pitfalls to trusting that approach too much. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Erik van Zwet.

-Timestamps-

What is a RCT? (1:15), What are characteristic of a well designed trial? (2:00), How did you get interested in this research?(3:45), Data you obtained from Cochrane Database? 5:18), Power and how you got results (7:05), How does affect the laymen (9:49), Coverage of RCTs (12:00), Trends of exaggeration (14:17), What goes into exaggeration? (16:54), What needs to be done? (18:56), Across other fields (21:58)

Erik van Zwet (@erikvanzwet) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Data Sciences of the Leiden University Medical Center where he has been since 2009. He joined the school wanting to do more applied work in the areas of statistics and data analysis and has since published multiple papers in Significance Magazine including the main focus of today’s episode, “Addressing exaggeration of effects from single RCTs”.