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.

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?

Dr.PeteFamMed 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. Read four things before the headline number. The population, because trial populations are selected and supported in ways that real cohorts are not. The comparator, because "better than placebo" and "better than the current standard" are different claims and get reported identically. The primary endpoint as pre-registered, because a secondary endpoint promoted after the fact is a hypothesis rather than a finding. And the completion rate, because a large effect in the half of participants who finished is a different result from a large effect in everybody enrolled.

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.

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.

MASHdoc_SA said:

Read four things before the headline number.

Correct, and worth adding that it is reversible. Nothing being described here is a one-way door, which changes how cautious it is reasonable to be.

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.