News About the Success of a New Ebola Vaccine May Be Too Good to Be True

The Conversation - An opinion piece by Timothy Lahey, associate professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, on a recent study published in the prestigious journal The Lancet on a new Ebola vaccine that was "100% effective." Lahey notes that the vaccine is wonderful news, but that for three reasons, we cannot know if the vaccine really worked, or how well. "Those reasons are the lack of placebo comparison, the way the investigators diagnosed vaccine failure and the possibility of statistical flukes," says Lahey.