Statistics and Clinical Trials

I am reading the book Statistics Applied to Clinical Trials due to my great interest in the subject. I chose this book because it is a new edition and the index seemed to reflect closely what I expected to learn. But the book has disappointed me to some extent even though I am still finding it useful. The technical aspect of statistics is sometimes neglected or at least its presentation does not follow a standard: sometimes we see technical stuff without much explanation, without rigor and sometimes when we wish to see the math, it is not there. Formulas are frequently showed in a messy and difficult to understand way. Even though the authors do a good job on explaining the correct interpretation of hypothesis tests, they are too tied to the 5% and 1% rule as if it were universal. Sometimes they interpret p-value in the wrong way.

All of that is bad in a way because we are not sure we can trust the part of the book where we have less fluency. It has been a easy read though (will be for anyone with some background in statistics) and I think despite of the poor quality I have been exposed to, it is worth the time.

I might comment more on specific chapters...