Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42387271›Full record

ArticleStatistics in medicine2026

Optimal Weighted Tests for Replication Studies and the 'Two-Trials Rule' With Multiple Hypotheses.

David S Robertson, Thomas Jaki

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Statistics in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

David S RobertsonMRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6207-0416
Thomas JakiMRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Replication studies for scientific research are an important part of ensuring the reliability and integrity of experimental findings. In the context of clinical trials, the concept of replication has been formalized by the "two-trials" rule, where two pivotal studies are required to show positive results before a drug can be approved. In experiments testing multiple hypotheses simultaneously, control of the overall familywise error rate (FWER) is additionally required in many contexts. The well-known Bonferroni procedure controls the FWER, and a natural extension is to introduce weights into this procedure to reflect the a-priori importance of hypotheses or to maximize some measure of the overall power of the experiment. In this article, we consider analyzing a replication study using an optimal weighted Bonferroni procedure, with the weights based on the results of the original study that is being replicated and the optimality criterion being to maximize the disjunctive power of the trial (the power to reject at least one non-null hypothesis). We show that using the proposed procedure can lead to a substantial increase in the probability of success (PoS), is robust to changes in the effect sizes between the two studies, and recovers the submission wise type I error rate

Indexed as

Clinical Trials as TopicComputer SimulationData Interpretation, StatisticalHumansModels, StatisticalReproducibility of ResultsResearch Designfamilywise error ratepowerreproducibilitytype I error rate control

Identifiers

PMID42387271
PMCPMC13323599

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.