Senn Stephen
Department of Statistics, University of Glasgow, UK.
Stat Med. 2007 Mar 30;26(7):1417-30. doi: 10.1002/sim.2639.
A previous investigation by Lambert et al., which used computer simulation to examine the influence of choice of prior distribution on inferences from Bayesian random effects meta-analysis, is critically examined from a number of viewpoints. The practical example used is shown to be problematic. The various prior distributions are shown to be unreasonable in terms of what they imply about the joint distribution of the overall treatment effect and the random effects variance. An alternative form of prior distribution is tentatively proposed. Finally, some practical recommendations are made that stress the value both of fixed effect analyses and of frequentist approaches as well as various diagnostic investigations.
兰伯特等人之前的一项调查使用计算机模拟来检验先验分布的选择对贝叶斯随机效应荟萃分析推断的影响，本文从多个角度对该调查进行了批判性审视。所使用的实际例子被证明存在问题。就其对总体治疗效果和随机效应方差的联合分布所暗示的内容而言，各种先验分布被证明是不合理的。本文初步提出了一种替代形式的先验分布。最后，提出了一些实用建议，强调了固定效应分析、频率学派方法以及各种诊断研究的价值。
