Comment

Comment by blithedale

ARGH. ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Almost no one reads these papers when stuff like this gets posted on HN.

And there is shameful statistical fuckery afoot in this paper. People are only repeating the hype statistics at the top of the paper.

Their "pathological response" rates touted at the top of paper only come from the 1/3 of women able to actually carry out the diet. This is the "per-protocol" language in the abstract. An honest evaluation here would be "intention to treat" and analyze chemo responses in every assigned to each arm.

And they do that evaulation, but bury it later in their paper. Turns out when you account for the 2/3 of women who can't do that fasting, there's NO DIFFERENCE in response rate:

   "The overall pCR rate was 11.7% and did not differ between the two groups (10.8% in FMD group versus 12.7% in control group; OR 0.830, 95% CI 0.282–2.442, P = 0.735."
Argh...
parent blithedale 6 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton