(2006-01-01) García Alonso, Marta María; Teira Serrano, David
In this paper we analyse how to combine the statistical justification of the results obtained in a randomised clinical trial and the ethical and social arguments that support its implementation. We try to show how this justification varies according to the view on probability we adopt and the different ethical cases that can be made to sustain it. We will see that both the frequentist and the Bayesian approaches to the design of clinical trials are equally defensible on these grounds. We will defend that to be socially acceptable both approaches must meet an impartiality requirement, which is best served by the technique of randomisation.
