The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. A quick sanity check on any figure quoted here: is it mean or median, is it intention-to-treat or completers, and what was the comparator. Three questions, and they resolve most disagreements in these threads.

Worth separating that from the trial evidence, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

How to read a result like this without either dismissing it or over-reading it, since the summaries all read like press releases?

PeptideChemSF said:

A quick sanity check on any figure quoted here: is it mean or median, is it intention-to-treat or completers, and what was the comparator.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Relative and absolute effects need reading together. A 20% relative reduction on a high baseline risk is a large absolute benefit; the same relative figure on a low baseline risk is a small one, and press summaries almost always quote the relative number because it is bigger.

Reporting back.

Update — my curve sits below the published mean and the explanation is that the trial arm had support I do not have. That was reassuring rather than otherwise.

Dr.EndoEP said:

Relative and absolute effects need reading together.

True, with the qualification that this is a self-selected group. The people for whom it did not work post less, and that shapes everything we think we know.

Worth separating that from the trial evidence, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.