PharmacoVig_BOS said:

Read four things before the headline number.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. Small molecule does not automatically mean cheap. Price is set by what the market will bear and by patent life, not by cost of goods, and I would not assume the savings reach patients.

One concrete data point for the thread. 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.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

Dr.SportsMedIN said:

Small molecule does not automatically mean cheap.

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.

Following on from KristenIndy — and this may be the naive question:

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

Closing the loop on my own question.

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.