the STEP thing finally clicked for me and I want to write it down
the STEP thing finally clicked for me and I want to write it down. Not a hot take, just something I have not seen said plainly here. Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup detail that the entire thread had been speculating about. Relative risk reduction without the baseline rate is…
Why comparing across trials almost never works, with the specific failure modes.
Different populations: an obesity programme and a diabetes programme enrol different people with different baseline characteristics. Different endpoints: body weight change, glycaemic control and cardiovascular events are not convertible. Different durations: 68 weeks and 72 weeks are not the same, and the curves have not flattened by either.
Different analysis populations: one paper reports intention-to-treat, another emphasises completers. Different support: some trial designs include structured lifestyle contact that no member of this board receives.
Stack those and the "X beats Y" tables that circulate here are comparing five things at once and attributing the difference to the molecule.
[deleted]
the confidence interval is the finding, the point estimate is the headline
SELECT was cardiovascular outcomes, not weight
open-label extensions are not the same evidence as the randomised phase
How long was the randomised phase before any extension?
read the endpoint before you read the headline
That is the 68-week readout, not the 72-week one. Different trial, different duration.