Friday, August 08, 20083
Randomized trials for parachutes
Some funny satire from the BMJ. I wish the NEJM had a similar sense of humor.
Go over and laugh at their mock study, Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.
(via Not Totally Rad)
Go over and laugh at their mock study, Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.
(via Not Totally Rad)
Comments
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Anonymous
The concepts like NNT and absolute risk reductions are trivial and hardly require more than basic math to understanding. You don't need a statistics course to understand them. Especially if you word it as a simple example: If we treat X people for Y years, N people will experience this, and M people will experience that. An elementary school kid will understand you.
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storkdoc
Well anonymous, I am not going to say that you are stupid, but you did post this in "Randomized trials for parachutes."
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Anonymous
From anon at 5:05.
Post a CommentAs to absolute risk reduction, it is also fairly easy to understand for anybody that knows percentages which includes 5th graders: "thise will decrease your risk of ... from A% to B%". But really since ARR is just 1/NNT, you don't need to talk about both NNT and ARR. So a simple example from the first paragraph will suffice.
For some reason doctors think we are stupid. Even if they know our profession and it is in sciences or engineering. Even if you don't agree that a high schooler could understand these concepts, do you think those of your patients who are indeed mathematicians, engineers or scientists wouldn't be able to understand them?
I am sick and tired of doctors thinking I cannot understand basic statistics and talking to me like I am a 3rd grader. Even if a moment before they asked me what I do and I said I was a software engineer and that I work in Research. Do you know that a CS degree is mostly math, especially an advanced CS degree? Maybe I didn't have biostatistics and maybe I've even forgotten the statistics I had in college. It still took me less than a minute to understand these concepts - about as long as it took me to read the definition. In fact, I can bet money that I could indeed understand them in 5th grade.
5:05 PM
But I too find this current layout clunky for posting. It took me awhile to figure out where the post thingy is. Then like you I thought that it was at the bottom, but the post icon is at the top.
It is harder Kevin, maybe you can continue with your revamp.
9:00 PM
Yes, I noticed it was the wrong thread the moment after I posted it, but it was too late. In my defense - I was posting it from work, and I didn't have much time to scroll all the way up to the top of the page to figure it out. Then I figured, never mind, since Kevin checks posts, maybe he'll fix it...
It is confusing. The distance between the comment lines on top and bottom is similar, so the only way to say which comments apply to which post is to scroll all the way up...
12:58 PM