SELECT: what the trials say vs what this community says
The title is the argument: SELECT: what the trials say vs what this community says. Here is the rest of it. Intention-to-treat analyses everybody randomised regardless of what they did afterwards. Completer analyses only those who finished. The second is systematically more flattering and both are legitimate if…
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.
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.
Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup detail that the entire thread had been speculating about.
Went looking for the registered protocol to see whether the endpoint had changed. It had not, which was reassuring and worth checking.
That is a relative risk reduction. Quoting it without the absolute numbers overstates the case considerably.
Relative risk reduction without the baseline rate is uninterpretable. A large relative reduction on a small absolute risk is a small absolute benefit.
The press release said that; the publication says something more hedged. Worth reading both.
intention to treat versus completers changes the number substantially
Is that intention-to-treat or completers?
the confidence interval is the finding, the point estimate is the headline