I really like both of your responses. To add to Peter's thoughts, I've
found that more than half of SAS programmers can learn modern
programming languages given a push. And if pharmaceutical companies
ever knew the true cost of SAS in terms of their having to hire more
programmers to deal with an archaic language they would be astonished.
Rumor had it that Pfizer's yearly SAS licensing costs were $14M/year
several years ago. Programmer costs were probably in the same range.
Frank
bill.venab...@csiro.au wrote:
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think Peter is being a bit harsh on SAS.
I prefer Greg Snow's analogy (in the fortune collection): If SPSS (or SAS) and R
were vehicles, SPSS would be the bus, going on fixed routes and efficiently
carrying lots of people to standard places, whereas R is the off-road 4WD SUV,
complete with all sorts of kit including walking boots, kayak on the top, &c.
R will take you anywhere you want to go, but it might take you longer to master it
than the simple recipes for data analysis typical of the 'bus' programs.
Bill Venables
CSIRO/CMIS Cleveland Laboratories
-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On
Behalf Of Peter Dalgaard
Sent: Thursday, 18 February 2010 5:55 PM
To: Frank E Harrell Jr
Cc: r-help@r-project.org; Cody Hamilton
Subject: Re: [R] Use of R in clinical trials
Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
Cody,
How amazing that SAS is still used to produce reports that reviewers
hate and that requires tedious low-level programming. R + LaTeX has it
all over that approach IMHO. We have used that combination very
successfully for several data and safety monitoring reporting tasks for
clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry.
Frank
There is a point to it, though. One of my friends and colleagues in the
business put it in one word: Mediocrity.
SAS does a mediocre job at analysing and reporting and data handling
using a mediocre control language. But: It can be handled by mediocre
programmers writing and modifying mediocre programs, and those people
are more available and replaceable, maybe even cheaper. R/LaTeX may run
circles around SAS in terms of capapilities, flexibility, and elegance,
but it can also send a programmer who doesn't have the required skill
set running around in circles.
-pd
Cody Hamilton wrote:
Dear all,
There have been a variety of discussions on the R list regarding the
use of R in clinical trials. The following post from the STATA list
provides an interesting opinion regarding why SAS remains so popular
in this arena:
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-01/msg00098.html
Regards,
-Cody Hamilton
--
Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chairman School of Medicine
Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
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