why does nobody talk about SELECT
Asking properly rather than in a comment on somebody else’s thread: why does nobody talk about SELECT.
Compared myself to a trial mean for about six months before realising the trial arm had dietitian contact every fortnight.
The discontinuation numbers were the most useful thing in the paper for me and they were in a supplementary table.
Went looking for the registered protocol to see whether the endpoint had changed. It had not, which was reassuring and worth checking.
Corrections welcome, especially the pedantic ones. Pedantry is how this board earns its reputation.
best — the order this archive was captured in
On means, which this board treats as targets and which are nothing of the sort.
A reported mean body weight change is the centre of a distribution that in these trials is very wide. Substantial numbers of participants did much better, and substantial numbers did considerably worse while remaining on the drug and in the analysis.
Quoting the mean as an expectation therefore misleads in both directions: it makes ordinary results look like failures and it makes exceptional results look normal. If a paper publishes the distribution — and several do, in the appendix — look at that instead. It is far more informative than the number in the abstract.
What was the discontinuation rate?
check who the comparator was before you compare anything
That is the 68-week readout, not the 72-week one. Different trial, different duration.
That is a relative risk reduction. Quoting it without the absolute numbers overstates the case considerably.
phase 2 finds a dose, phase 3 measures the effect
the confidence interval is the finding, the point estimate is the headline
What was the discontinuation rate?
careful_gradient_again is right about the programme names. They are different populations with different endpoints.
Careful with that mean. The distribution around it was wide enough that it describes very few individual participants.
Quoted a figure here confidently, got asked whether it was ITT, went and checked, and it was not. Learned something.
FLOW was kidney outcomes and it is the one nobody quotes
What did the confidence interval look like?
Discontinuation rates are a tolerability result. A trial with a strong efficacy number and heavy discontinuation is telling you two things and people only quote one.
Retitled: the original quoted a diabetes endpoint as an obesity result.
Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup detail that the entire thread had been speculating about.
Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup detail that the entire thread had been speculating about.
Disagreeing with this line: that is a relative reduction and the absolute numbers are considerably less dramatic.
Read a press release and the publication three months apart. The hedging in the second one was substantial.
Is that intention-to-treat or completers?
Same. A press release is a claim about a result; the publication is the result.
- 1On means, which this board treats as targets and which are nothing of the…11 comments in this branch · started by u/receptor_bias_rick
- 2Discontinuation rates are a tolerability result. A trial with a strong…8 comments in this branch · started by u/ahmed_iyer