UCLA

Futility designs bhaveeen proposed and used by constructing classical (non-Bayesian) hypothesis tests such that the decision of therapeutic interest is to accept the null hypothesis.A consequence is that the probability of accepting (failing to reject) the null when the null is false is unknown. Reversal of the conventional null and alternative hypotheses is not required either to demonstrate futility/nonsuperiority, or to align type I and II errors with their consequences. Conventional methods to test whether the response to the investigational agent is superior to a comparative control (superiority trial) are preferable and in the case that the null hypothesis is rejected, the associated type I error is known.