De­bat­ing the p-val­ues be­hind Mod­er­na's $16B mar­ket-cap gain

On Tues­day, Mod­er­na and Mer­ck re­port­ed what looked like one of the most ex­cit­ing pieces of bio­phar­ma news of the year: Mod­er­na’s mR­NA vac­cine, com­bined with Mer­ck’s im­munother­a­py, cut the risk of lat­er-stage melanoma re­cur­rence or death by 44%.

And it didn’t take long for a long-run­ning de­bate about sta­tis­ti­cal in­tegri­ty to bub­ble up around the da­ta. At the heart of the is­sue was the com­pa­nies’ use of a type of p-val­ue analy­sis, which mea­sures how strong re­sults are.

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