Topic summary

Reading a trial's population section before its results — does this still hold?

Evidence › Trials randomised trial open label intention to treat discontinuation & dropout surrogate endpoints Closed

This is a generated summary. It shows the 9 most-liked posts from a topic of 155, in their original order, with the accepted answer included where one exists. It is a reading aid and it will miss nuance — the full topic is the record.

n.silvaTL217 Apr 2025#16

s.poulsen, post #7: Composite endpoints should be read component by component. A composite driven entirely by its softest component is a different finding from one where the components move together. I looked this up rather than remembered it, which is the right order. Go to post

Where I part company with post #13, and it is a narrow parting.

Funding and trial conduct should be stated and are a weak predictor of anything on their own. Design quality is the stronger signal and it is checkable.

31 likes in reply to #7 15mo

m.radichTL219 Apr 2025#23

Reading back through, this was answered upthread and I missed it. My fault.

31 likes 15mo

KnowltonTL3Regular23 Apr 2025#33

Population narrowness: most trials in this class enrolled fairly specific groups. Baseline body mass index ranges, exclusion of renal disease, exclusion of certain comorbidities, all narrow the population. Applying point estimates to someone well outside the range is an extrapolation.

33 likes 15mo

l.aguirreTL21 May 2025#57

Picking up post #55: that is the part I would want checked first.

The estimand: what the trial set out to estimate. Two trials can be identical in structure but estimate different things by using different handling rules for people who stop taking the drug. Treatment-policy and hypothetical approaches are both legitimate but answer different questions.

I keep a log of this specifically because memory is unreliable about it.

30 likes 15mo

a.weissTL24 May 2025#68

This follows post #65 rather than contradicting it.

Intent-to-treat versus per-protocol: ITT includes everyone assigned regardless of whether they took the drug. Per-protocol includes only those who completed it as intended. The two can give substantially different results.

33 likes 15mo

z.nakamuraTL25 May 2025#69

Post #65 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.

Absolute and relative effects answer different questions. Write down the event rate in each arm and the difference between them; everything quotable is derived from those two numbers.

The strength of my opinion here exceeds the strength of my evidence.

32 likes 15mo

j.sorensenTL219 May 2025#121

Acknowledging rather than arguing. The reasoning holds as far as I can follow it.

31 likes 14mo

e.mwangiTL221 May 2025#130

A treatment-policy estimand asks what happens to people assigned to a strategy, including those who abandon it. A hypothetical estimand asks what would have happened had everyone continued. Both are legitimate and they give different numbers.

It cost nothing to check and would have cost something not to.

32 likes 14mo

logbook_erinTL3Regular23 May 2025#138

Seconded. It reads as careful rather than confident, which is the right register.

31 likes 14mo

Read the full topic (155 posts)

This topic was referenced in

Interim analyses and stopping rules — does this still hold?Evidence › Trials · 34 replies
Revisiting: Primary endpoint hierarchies and why order mattersEvidence › Trials · 25 replies

Promoted into the documentation commons. The content of this topic is maintained at FLOW — trial digest, with named maintainers and a review date. The promotion was discussed in doc review. Corrections are best raised against the document, which is the version that gets kept current.

This topic was closed 180 days after the last reply. Closing is automatic for quiet topics so that a settled answer does not collect new questions underneath it. If you have a follow-up, open a new topic and link back to this one — that keeps both readable and gives your question its own title.

Suggested topics

Topic	Participants	Replies	Views	Activity
Non-inferiority margins: how they are chosen and how they are abused — a second dataset Evidence › Trials randomised trial discontinuation & dropout intention to treat estimand Non-inferiority margins: how they are chosen and how they are abused — a second dataset — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable. Posting a small dataset on Non-inferiority…	+32	37	574	5mo
Comparators chosen for regulatory reasons rather than clinical ones Evidence › Trials surrogate endpoints open label estimand randomised trial Pinned Closed On the subject in the title: Comparators chosen for regulatory reasons rather than clinical ones Working notes rather than a conclusion. An honest uncertainty about comparators chosen for regulatory reasons…		2	27k	14mo
Primary endpoint hierarchies and why order matters — one year on Evidence › Trials surrogate endpoints discontinuation & dropout estimand randomised trial Solved On the subject in the title: Primary endpoint hierarchies and why order matters — one year on Working notes rather than a conclusion. A follow-up question about Primary endpoint hierarchies that I did not…	+56	61	37k	11h
Subgroup analyses: pre-specified versus discovered Evidence › Trials randomised trial intention to treat surrogate endpoints estimand Subgroup analyses: pre-specified versus discovered — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable. I would like to disagree carefully with the settled view on subgroup analyses, and I…		2	27k	1d
Subgroup analyses: pre-specified versus discovered — a second dataset Evidence › Trials open label discontinuation & dropout estimand randomised trial On the subject in the title: Subgroup analyses: pre-specified versus discovered — a second dataset Working notes rather than a conclusion. Posting a small dataset on Subgroup analyses. It is mine, it is…	+71	79	906	3mo

Related topics — sharing the tags randomised trial, open label, intention to treat

Topic	Participants	Replies	Views	Activity
Journal club: FLOW and the renal composite, component by component Evidence › Journal club randomised trial estimand risk of bias On the subject in the title: Journal club: FLOW and the renal composite, component by component Working notes rather than a conclusion. Reading FLOW ( N Engl J Med , 2024) for the population rather than the…	+84	91	18k	2y
Coming back to: What the published dose-response for semaglutide actually looks like above 2.4 mg Compounds › Semaglutide effect size type 2 diabetes semaglutide STEP programme Solved The question in the title: What the published dose-response for semaglutide actually looks like above 2.4 mg I will give what I have already checked below so nobody repeats it. I would like to know what…	+23	27	9.9k	1mo
Journal club: STEP 3 and the intensive behavioural therapy floor Evidence › Journal club randomised trial journal club effect size risk of bias Posting this under the heading it deserves: Journal club: STEP 3 and the intensive behavioural therapy floor Everything below is what sits behind that. Two things I would like separated before anyone answers…	+6	10	13k	28d
The most common factual error about semaglutide on the internet Compounds › Semaglutide STEP programme randomised trial type 2 diabetes effect size On the subject in the title: The most common factual error about semaglutide on the internet Working notes rather than a conclusion. Putting the numbers in the first post, because a question about a compound…		2	49k	2y
Semaglutide in people without diabetes: what the evidence base looks like Compounds › Semaglutide semaglutide effect size STEP programme randomised trial Semaglutide in people without diabetes: what the evidence base looks like Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did. What changes if the standard account of semaglutide…	+2	6	18k	17mo