MSB Trading - 2019, page-4412

Firstly, a very happy 2020 to all ! Am ensuring I catch up on MSB posts at least once every couple of days.

Here's something that supports @Techinvestor's views ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12630-018-1207-y )

Is it ever reasonable to stop a trial for efficacy? Perhaps only when it is obvious that clinical equipoise no longer exists and continuing a trial would withhold clearly beneficial treatment. This could occur if new and robust data are published during the conduct of the trial. Nevertheless, as highlighted by a recent editorial summarizing the conflicting results of two meta-analyses examining the efficacy of ketamine for electroconvulsive therapy, clinical equipoise clearly exists.5 Therefore, in our view, a modestly significant result observed after 24 patients in the trial by Gamble et al. was insufficient grounds for their research ethics board to declare that clinical equipoise was no longer valid. In fact, stopping the trial early for efficacy will likely lead to additional trials trying to answer the same question.2 The end result will be more uncertainty, additional use of resources, and delays in disseminating potentially beneficial results—the very consequence we are trying to avoid.