Maggie Qian

Maggie Qian

Seattle, WA
Biostatistician with a decade in oncology clinical trials. Founder of Zetyra. Writing about methods that hold up in practice.
09
Dec
3 min read

The Surrogate Trap: When the Mechanism Works But the Patient Dies

In the late 1980s, cardiologists thought they had cracked the code. They knew that patients who developed irregular heartbeats, premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), after a heart attack were more likely to die. They had drugs, encainide and flecainide, that reliably suppressed those irregular beats. The intuition was flawless: Suppress the

03
Dec
5 min read

What A/B Testing Teams Can Learn from 40 Years of Oncology Trial Mistakes

What oncology learned the hard way—and tech keeps relearning. Why Tech Should Pay Attention to Cancer Trials Most product teams think of A/B testing as a modern invention: lean, data‑driven, and efficient. But step back far enough and today’s experimentation culture in tech looks eerily like

26
Nov
4 min read

When Every Company Becomes a Trialist

In 2014, during a major snowstorm, Uber ran a randomized test by turning off surge pricing for a subset of riders. Some waited longer. Others never got a ride at all. It wasn’t just a pricing tweak. It was a trial of behavior, supply, and equity. Trials, once reserved