Presenting Results
Consider a hypothetical drug which reduces the relative risk of colon cancer by 50% over five years. Even without the drug, colon cancer is fairly rare, maybe 1 in 3,000 in every five-year period. The rate of colon cancer for a five-year treatment with the drug is therefore 1/6,000, as by treating 6,000 people with the drug, one can expect to reduce the number of colon cancer cases from 2 to 1.
The raw calculation of absolute risk reduction is a probability (0.003 fewer cases per person, using the colon cancer example above). Authors such as Ben Goldacre believe that this information is best presented as a natural number in the context of the baseline risk ("reduces 2 cases of colon cancer to 1 case if you treat 6,000 people for five years"). Natural numbers, which are used in the number needed to treat approach, are easily understood by non-experts.
Read more about this topic: Absolute Risk Reduction
Famous quotes containing the words presenting and/or results:
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)