Experiences of a biostatistician on a UK research ethics committee

Poorly planned research liable to produce misleading results is unethical. Local Research Ethics Committees in the U.K. have a duty to assess the scie ntific merit of studies, of which statistical aspects are an essential comp onent, yet few have access to a biostatistician. I present personal experie nce of the workload involved and general issues arising in submissions to a large teaching NHS Hospitals Trust, with emphasis on sample size. These ge neral issues should apply to analogous committees in countries other than t he U.K. The opportunity to influence the quality of all local medical resea rch is argued to be reasonable incentive for more voluntary involvement by statisticians. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.