Statistical and Epistemological Issues in the Evaluation of Treatment Efficacy of Pharmaceutical, Psychological, and Combination Treatments for Women's Sexual Desire Difficulties

Abstract

We were grateful to receive responses from Leonore Tiefer, Anita Clayton and Robert Pyke, and Richard Balon and Robert Segraves, to our commentary (Brotto et al., 2016) on Pyke and Clayton (2015). These commentaries raise a number of substantive statistical and epistemological issues relating to the evaluation of treatment efficacy in pharmaceutical, psychological, and combination treatments for sexual desire difficulties and caution researchers to remain mindful of sources of bias as we do the science. In what follows, we discuss each of these issues in turn in hopes of encouraging our field to adopt the highest possible standards when carrying out and interpreting treatment outcome research.