As statisticians, we often need to bring terrible news to the team. We’re the first to know, that a study didn’t reach the primary endpoint, or that safety analyses showed some new signals, or that some analyses contained mistakes, that need to be corrected.

How do you deal with such situations?

In today’s episode, Benjamin and I discuss the following points:

  • First mover advantage
  • Preparing and planning
    • Be clear on your goals
    • Who do you want to move from A to B 
    • What questions will come up?
    • What will be our replies?
    • What will be the follow-up questions?
    • Who will be affected?
    • Who needs/must know first?
    • How do you communicate it?

How to break the bad news:

  • Tell it all
  • Tell it fast
  • Tell them what you’re doing about it
  • Tell them, when it’s over
  • Get back to work

Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

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I want to help the community of statisticians, data scientists, programmers and other quantitative scientists to be more influential, innovative, and effective. I believe that as a community we can help our research, our regulatory and payer systems, and ultimately physicians and patients take better decisions based on better evidence.

I work to achieve a future in which everyone can access the right evidence in the right format at the right time to make sound decisions.

When my kids are sick, I want to have good evidence to discuss with the physician about the different therapy choices.

When my mother is sick, I want her to understand the evidence and being able to understand it.

When I get sick, I want to find evidence that I can trust and that helps me to have meaningful discussions with my healthcare professionals.

I want to live in a world, where the media reports correctly about medical evidence and in which society distinguishes between fake evidence and real evidence.

Let’s work together to achieve this.