A medical researcher is working on a new treatment for a certain type of cancer.

Question

A medical researcher is working on a new treatment for a certain type of cancer. The average survival time after diagnosis on the standard treatment is one year. In an early trial, she tries the new treatment on four subjects who have an average survival time after diagnosis of three years. Although the survival time has tripled, the results are not statistically significant even at the 0.10 significance level. The explanation is

(A) the placebo effect is present, which limits statistical significance.

(B) the sample size is small.

(C) that although the survival time has doubled, in reality the actual increase is really two years.

(D) the calculation was in error. The researchers forgot to include the sample size.

(E) the results are not of practical importance.

Explanation / Answer

A cancer treatment is expected to work on many thousands of cancer patients. So four subjects is not a sufficient sample size for the result to have a statistical significance. So the answer is (b)

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