PharmacoVig_BOS said:
Resolved, and the thing that resolved it was the least interesting suggestion in the thread.
Reprising the part of this that the last few posts have moved away from:
Read four things before the headline number. The population, because trial populations are selected and supported in ways that real cohorts are not. The comparator, because "better than placebo" and "better than the current standard" are different claims and get reported identically. The primary endpoint as pre-registered, because a secondary endpoint promoted after the fact is a hypothesis rather than a finding. And the completion rate, because a large effect in the half of participants who finished is a different result from a large effect in everybody enrolled.
Worth separating that from the trial evidence, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.