STAT 301 - Business Statistics
In-Class Activity - Is Ivermectin Effective in Treating COVID?
(counts as Lecture Review #25)

This in-class activity is based upon a one-page summary of an article from the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading medical journal. A copy of that summary page is available here. It describes a research study on the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid. Use this information to answer the following questions.

1) We are told (in the "Methods" section of the article summary) that the study was "double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled." Briefly explain what each of these three terms mean, and why they are important. Is this a controlled experiment or an observational study?

2) What is the population in this study? That is, to what group of individuals can the results of this study be generalized?

3) What is the dependent variable in this study? That is, what is it that the researchers measuring on each participant in the study? Therefore, will the data analysis involve computations on means or proportions?

4) What are the data in the study? Specifically:

4a) How many subjects were in the treatment group?

4b) How many subjects were in the control group?

5) In the "Results" section of the article summary, the authors speak of a "primary-outcome event." What are they talking about? How often did this happen, in the treatment group? In the control group?

6) Using the data in this study, do all steps of an appropriate statistical procedure to answer the research question: Is ivermectin an effective treatment for patients with Covid?

7) At the end of the "Results" section we are told that there were "no significant effects of ivermectin use on secondary outcomes or adverse events." What does "significant" mean in this context? What, specifically, was not "significant" here?

8) Suppose you are a journalist tasked with writing a news article on this study. Draft the lead paragraph of your article. (Remember: it’s a news story. You will want to use regular language, avoiding technical medical vocabulary.)