SURPASS-2 and the head-to-head design

Started 4 February 2025 · 24 replies · 266 hearts · read 3k times

NadjaBelgrade, RS · 4 February 2025

1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: SURPASS-2 and the head-to-head design

Putting this here because I do not want to be sold anything, I want to know what is actually established.

I would like to compare how two different measurements answer two different questions, because I have been treating them as interchangeable.

My question is about what a particular measurement does and does not tell you, because I think I have been reading more into it than it says.

I have been specific in the title on purpose. 2 is what it is, and being vague about it has not helped me so far.

If anybody has the primary source, I would be very grateful for it — I have been going round in circles.

JunoBrighton, UK

The paper we read last month had a population nothing like most of this circle, which does not make it useless and does limit what it tells us.

11me too 6

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

Facilitator note: this circle is not a place to arrange anything with anybody, and it never has been. It is a place to read carefully.

TheaBergen, NO

Something practical: I write three sentences about each paper afterwards and I now have two years of notes I actually refer back to.

JuniperMachynlleth, UK

My experience is that the group is much better at this than I am alone, because somebody always spots the thing I skimmed.

XanBerlin, DE

Thea said something I want to sit with for a second.

What helped was somebody explaining confidence intervals to me properly, once, in plain terms, and I have read differently ever since.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

My honest position is that the evidence base for the main compounds is genuinely substantial and the evidence for a great deal else is not.

OrphBath, UK

Something I got wrong early was reading a single paper as an answer. It is one piece of evidence and it usually raises three questions.

NilsUppsala, SE

Building on what Gwenda wrote rather than answering the original question.

I would say do read the supplementary material occasionally. Twice now the thing I wanted to know was only in there.

AbelAddis Ababa, ET

Picking up Orph’s point rather than starting a new one.

My reading has got slower and better. I get through a quarter of what I used to and I understand considerably more of it.

OskarWarsaw, PL

#10

I would have written the same thing a year ago, word for word.

FabianBasel, CH

#11

What Oskar described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I would encourage anybody nervous about joining to come and say nothing for a few sessions. That is what I did for four months.

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

#12

What I have taken from this group is mostly humility about how much is genuinely settled.

11me too 9

PádraigGalway, IE

#13

Nothing here is medical advice, and a paper is not a recommendation for any individual person including the ones in it.

CasperOdense, DK

#14

The session where we read a paper about something none of us takes was the most useful, because nobody was defending a position.

AnnaAthens, GR

#15

One paper a fortnight, read properly, has taught me more than three years of reading summaries of papers.

11me too 4

EphraimBrooklyn, NY

#16

Coming back to say the fortnightly rhythm has held for two years and it is the thing on this site I would least like to lose.

SaoirseKilkenny, IE

#17

Read, understood, and glad you are here.

PrunellaBury St Edmunds, UK

#18

Ephraim — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

The thing I look at first now is who was actually in the study, because that is usually where the answer to my question lives.

IzoldaVilnius, LT

#19

Something practical: I read the methods before the conclusions now, which somebody here suggested and which changed how much I trust what I read.

BlueStroud, UK

#20

What Izolda described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I had to learn that an effect being statistically significant and it mattering to a person are two entirely separate questions.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#21

What I would flag is that a study in a different population may not transfer, and that is a limitation rather than a criticism.

PatrickLimerick, IE

#22

Somebody here asked what would change our minds, at the start of a session, and it improved the discussion enormously.

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

#23

Gently: a mechanism is not an outcome. Three replies have moved between the two as though they were the same claim.

GilTel Aviv, IL

#24

Something worth knowing: the difference between a trial and an observational study changes what you can conclude, and I did not know that two years ago.