Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

The philosophical opinions of neuroscientists: "While 64% of participants endorse reductive physicalism - the view that mental activity is fully reducible to brain function - only 17.5% reject free will." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42455665/ n=2,657

FDA-OCE-ASA Oncology Educational Fellowship for biostatisticians community.amstat.org/fdaoceasaonc...

Design, simulate, refine: simulation-guided clinical trials for accelerated drug development www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The DahShu IDSWG Oncology Working Group published this nice survey across the industry to understand challenges and current practices following Project Optimus in early-phase oncology trials link.springer.com/article/10.1...

FDA's new draft guidance on "Demonstrating Substantial Evidence of Effectiveness for Human Drug and Biological Products". The final version is set to replace the standards set in 1998! www.fda.gov/regulatory-i...

This paper is worth it for table 1 alone. 👏 @sabinehoffmann11.bsky.social @boulesteixlaure.bsky.social et al onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

RIP Joseph Fraumeni, who co-discovered the Li-Fraumeni syndrome (later known to be driven by germline p53 mutations) by identifying and following up 4 families with increased chances of childhood cancers... dceg.cancer.gov/about/staff-...

This made me very happy to see :) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

@imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social, @who.int and @easlnews.bsky.social have launched first WHO Collaborating Centre dedicated to #liver disease. @britishlivertrust.bsky.social #LiverDisease #SteatoticLiverDisease www.imperial.ac.uk/news/article...

Looking forward!

A new target trial emulation concludes that GLP-1 receptor agonist use is associated with less cancer risk in obese nondiabetic adults. Median follow up = 2 years, 13 cancers. 🤔 www.annalsofoncology.org/article/S092...

“I don’t need [people] to think of me as courageous or inspirational – just someone who believed in science and, when faced with a terrible diagnosis, tried something bold and new,” he wrote. Also check his case study: www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

I am not at #ASCO26, but I have seen posters online of phase 1 trials using the 3+3 design. How sad?

I love how the RASolute 302 trial for daraxonrasib in metastatic pancreatic cancer, is a successful drug development story. I love reading success stories like this one.

My much more radical opinion is that all ethical approvals for human/animal biomedical research should be openly published, and all papers resulting from those studies should be easily linked to the approval. This one *really* freaks people out and I suspect we all know why.

New video presentation on the FDA Bayesian guidance: www.fharrell.com/talk/bguide/ #StatsSky #Statistics #Bayes @fda.gov #pharma #rct #clinicaltrials

THEY TILE THE PLANE

Check out this interactive map for all dose-finding trial designs: eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Portals/... Associated paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New NIH policy demands advance approval of any foreign co-authors drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/05/22/n...

EMA CHMP recommended approval, interesting: www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre...

BIOMEDE randomized phase 2 trial for testing targeted treatments in DIGG was stopped for futility. Why does nothing work for this nasty disease.... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy International Clinical Trials Day!

Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained go.nature.com/3RiE5HN

The physical-sciences repository arXiv is banning researchers from posting their manuscripts on the platform for one year if a submission is found to contain references that have been hallucinated by artificial-intelligence tools. go.nature.com/4nDfXvv

One of my favorite Sagan moments

A chance to listen to J. Jack Lee comment on FDA's guidance on Bayesian statistics in trials www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Here's his letter, alongside co-authors Harrell & Spiegelhalter et al in JAMA: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Regulatory round-up: A month of key FDA approvals for cancer drugs www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/regulat...

Peter Thall: Practical Bayesian Guidelines for Small Randomized Oncology Trials (2025) www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/17...

You can see me at the upper left corner playing chess on my phone haha. It was a really great event. I love the LSHTM community!

Letter to POTUS supporting Dr. Richard Pazdur as the next FDA Commissioner www.nopatientleftbehind.org/fda-recommen...

Just learned Prof. @f2harrell.bsky.social is visiting Imperial soon. 🤩 So excited!!!

Response to the FDA Dosage Optimization Draft Guidance for Radiopharmaceutical Therapies jnm.snmjournals.org/content/earl...

CDC director called Test-Negative study design ‘crap.’ www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Academic clinical cancer trials to improve patient outcomes - The Lancet Oncology www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

FDA ODAC's comments (rejection, 6-3 voting) on AstraZeneca's application for Camizestrant (in combination with a CDK4/6 inhibitor) for advanced HR+ breast cancer when they show an ESR1-mutation on 1L prior to PD (SERENA-6; phase 3 trial) www.fda.gov/media/192156... (PDF)

We are recruiting! Research Associate/Senior Research Associate in Medical Statistics. Exciting role working with Pavel Mozgunov and colleagues on novel dose optimisation designs for combination trials with application in oncology and infectious diseases. 👇 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Pharma-Stat meeting in Basket Trial Designs in early-phase oncology. The presenters will discuss a computationally-cheap approach (power prior) for borrowing. Date & Time: Saturday, May 16, 2026. 10:00am-12:00pm, EST. www.linkedin.com/posts/yuanye...

What a story (2007): a trial participant was suicidal due to a breakup with his gf, and took 29 pills of IMP (antidepressant). Ended up pale and hypotensive in ER seeking help and received medical attention, only to find out that it was the placebo www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

UK’s NIHR Clinical Trials Toolkit has been updated: www.ct-toolkit.ac.uk/routemap

ggplot2 is one of those tools that completely changes how you think about data visualization. A great introduction if you want cleaner and more expressive charts: ggplot2-book.org #RStats #DataVisualization #DataScience #ggplot2 #DataViz

Webinar: Biostatistical Considerations When Using RWD and RWE in Clinical Studies for Regulatory Purposes Thursday, 21 May 2026 16:00 – 17:00 GMT+1 events.phuse.global/hub/events/b...

Retraction note in NEJM: "To the Editor: We were unaware of Journal policies on image manipulation and had altered our submission by using an AI tool to move the ruler to the top of the image. We therefore wish to retract our image and case report." www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

I felt a strange burning sensation over my entire body when I entered this building

Trump plans to fire FDA chief Marty Makary: report www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/trump...

Webinar by International Chinese Statistics Association on "Oncology Drug Development: A Practical Overview for Statisticians" by Qi Xia, Head of Oncology Statistics at AbbVie. 22 May, 8 PM London us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Malignant Adult Ovarian Germ Cell Tumors: An International Multicenter Study to Identify Relevant Prognostic Risk Factors for Stage IC and Beyond | Journal of Clinical Oncology ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...

A review from Stuart Pocock on covariate adjustment in randomized trials journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Mixed feelings about this, but good FDA is trying to speed things up I'd love to hear how it works for the piloting in AZ and Amgen's early-phase cancer trials www.fda.gov/news-events/...

PHAROS is a single arm trial that probably did not address OS intercurrent events handling strategies a priori ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...