From No Learning Without Risk, by Alex Tabarrok at the excellent Marginal Revolution:
An important feature of First Doses First (FDF) and other policies such as fractional dosing is that they are reversible. In other words, FDF contains an option to switch back to Second Doses First (SDF). Options increase in value with uncertainty (Dixit and Pindyck 1994). Thus, contrary to many people’s intuitions, the greater the uncertainty the greater the value of moving to First Doses First. Indeed, the value of the option can be so high that one might want to move to First Doses First even if it were worse in expectation. For example, if the expected efficacy of the first dose were just 45% then in expectation it would be worse than Second Doses First (95% efficacy) but if there were lots uncertainty around the 45% expected efficacy it might still be better to switch to First Doses First. If there was a 75% chance that the efficacy of the first dose was 30%, for example, and a 25% chance that it was 90% (.75.3+.25.90=45%) then under reversibility one would still want to switch to First Doses First to learn whether the true efficacy was 30% or 90%.
This sounds like a two way door that might have treasure on the other side, so I’m glad that’s where we’re heading.