In: Statistics and Probability
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars per year on
research and development of new drugs. The pharmaceutical company
must subject each new drug to lengthy and involved testing before
receiving the necessary permission from the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) to market the drug. The FDA's policy is that
the pharmaceutical company must provide substantial evidence that a
new drug is safe prior to receiving FDA approval, so that the FDA
can confidently certify the safety of the drug to potential
consumers.
a.) If the new drug testing were to be placed in a test of
hypothesis framework, would the null hypothesis be that the drug is
safe or unsafe? The alternative hypothesis? (In an actual test,
"safety" could be quantified using population parameters.) Fill in
the blanks below.
The null hypothesis would be that the drug is Select an answer safe
unsafe and the alternative hypothesis would be that the
drug is Select an answer safe unsafe .
b.) Describe the Type I and Type II errors in terms of this
application. Fill in the blanks below.
The Type I error for this problem would be to conclude that the
drug is Select an answer safe unsafe when the drug is
actually Select an answer unsafe safe The Type II error
for this problem would be to conclude that the drug is Select an
answer safe unsafe when the drug is actually Select an
answer safe unsafe .
Recall: αα is the probability of making a Type I error and ββ is
the probability of making a Type II error.
c.) If the FDA wants to be very confident that the drug is safe
before permitting it to be marketed, is it more important that αα
or ββ be small?