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…
How to read one of these papers in fifteen minutes, in the order that actually helps.
Start with the registered protocol and check the primary endpoint against what is reported. Then the methods: who was included, what the comparator was, how long the randomised phase ran. Then the discontinuation numbers, which are a tolerability result and are usually in a supplementary table.
Only then the efficacy figure, and read the interval rather than the point estimate. Finish with the limitations section, which is where the authors say what they actually think.
Fifteen minutes, and you will know more than any thread summarising it.
A confidence interval is the range of effects compatible with the data. Two trials with overlapping intervals have not disagreed, whatever their point estimates look like next to each other.
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That is a relative risk reduction. Quoting it without the absolute numbers overstates the case considerably.
discontinuation rate is a result, not a footnote