Principal investigators over-optimistically forecast scientific and operational outcomes for clinical trials

Abstract

Objective To assess the accuracy of principal investigators’ (PIs) predictions about three events for their own clinical trials: positivity on trial primary outcomes, successful recruitment and timely trial completion. Study design and setting A short, electronic survey was used to elicit subjective probabilities within seven months of trial registration. When trial results became available, prediction skill was calculated using Brier scores (BS) and compared against uninformative prediction (i.e. predicting 50% all of the time). Results 740 PIs returned surveys (16.7% response rate). Predictions on all three events tended to exceed observed event frequency. Averaged PI skill did not surpass uninformative predictions (e.g., BS = 0.25) for primary outcomes (BS = 0.25, 95% CI 0.20, 0.30) and were significantly worse for recruitment and timeline predictions (BS 0.38, 95% CI 0.33, 0.42; BS = 0.52, 95% CI 0.50, 0.55, respectively). PIs showed poor calibration for primary outcome, recruitment, and timelines (calibration index = 0.064, 0.150 and 0.406, respectively), modest discrimination in primary outcome predictions (AUC = 0.76, 95% CI 0.65, 0.85) but minimal discrimination in the other two outcomes (AUC = 0.64, 95% CI 0.57, 0.70; and 0.55, 95% CI 0.47, 0.62, respectively). Conclusion PIs showed overconfidence in favorable outcomes and exhibited limited skill in predicting scientific or operational outcomes for their own trials. They nevertheless showed modest ability to discriminate between positive and non-positive trial outcomes. Low survey response rates may limit generalizability.