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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.
20
Jan
4 min read

Inside the First FDA-Approved Bayesian Analysis

What REBYOTA teaches us about dynamic borrowing

14
Jan
5 min read

The FDA's Bayesian Guidance: Learning in Theory, Pre-Specification in Practice

The FDA just gave us 25 pages on Bayesian inference in pivotal trials. The philosophical message is clear: Bayesian methods are welcome. Informative priors, borrowing from external data, direct interpretation of posterior probabilities were all explicitly endorsed. The operational message is different: pre-specify everything. Bayesian methods promise learning. Regulators demand

13
Jan
7 min read

In Defense of 50:50 Randomization

I’ve been in meetings where “adaptive” was treated as a synonym for “smaller trial.” The assumption goes like this: if we can learn as we go, we can stop early when something works, drop arms that fail, and route patients to better treatments. Surely that means fewer patients overall.