Genetic investigations often involve the testing of vast numbers of related
hypotheses simultaneously. To control the overall error rate, a substantial
penalty is required, making it difficult to detect signals of moderate
strength. To improve the power in this setting, a number of authors have
considered using weighted p-values, with the motivation often based upon the
scientific plausibility of the hypotheses. We review this literature, derive
optimal weights and show that the power is remarkably robust to
misspecification of these weights. We consider two methods for choosing weights
in practice. The first, external weighting, is based on prior information. The
second, estimated weighting, uses the data to choose weights.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS289 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
