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