Dr.SleepRoch said:Read four things before the headline number.
This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. I would add the less popular caveat: these trial populations under-represented several groups, older adults and the highest BMI categories among them. The results probably generalise, and "probably" should be stated as an assumption rather than dropped.
Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. 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.
MikeFit_NJ said:I would add the less popular caveat: these trial populations under-represented several groups, older adults and the highest BMI categories among them.
Coming at MikeFit_NJ’s question from a different direction. 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.
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Browse GL BiochemA 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?
OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.
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.