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1. Recognising the need for fair comparisons of treatments
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1.1 Treatments may be harmful
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1.2 Personal experiences or anecdotes (stories) are an unreliable basis for assessing the effects of most treatments
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1.4 Widely used treatments or treatments that have been used for a long time are not necessarily beneficial or safe
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1.5 New, brand-named, or more expensive treatments may not be better than available alternatives
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1.6 Opinions of experts or authorities do not alone provide a reliable basis for deciding on the benefits and harms of treatments
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1.7 Conflicting interests may result in misleading claims about the effects of treatments
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2. Judging whether a comparison of treatments is a fair comparison
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2.1 Evaluating the effects of treatments requires appropriate comparisons
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2.2 Apart from the treatments being compared, the comparison groups need to be similar (i.e. ‘like needs to be compared with like’)
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2.5 If possible, people should not know which of the treatments being compared they are receiving
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3. Understanding the role of chance
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3.1 Small studies in which few outcome events occur are usually not informative and the results may be misleading
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4. Considering all the relevant fair comparisons
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4.1 The results of single comparisons of treatments can be misleading
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5. Understanding the results of fair comparisons of treatments
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5.1 Treatments usually have beneficial and harmful effects
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