"
The NNT" is a great example of taking very complicated scientific studies and presenting them in a compelling, easy to understand format. This group of doctors picks a particular treatment, reads all the studies, and then provides some very straightforward conclusions. The NNT (number needed to treat) is statistically how many patients have to be given a treatment to benefit. For example, steroid treatment for asthma attacks helps 1 out of every 8 patients, while aspirin to prevent heart attacks helps 1 out of 50 patients. Then they provide a simple stoplight review: green is good (more benefit than harm) yellow is 'we can't tell yet', red is 'no benefit found'. They follow up with some quick statistics on benefit / risk, and also translate the statistics into words for the arithmophobic, then some specific details about the studies and how they drew their conclusions.
I like the startling factoids (1 in 2 women got a false positive mammogram result - definitely not a test worth taking). I think it's useful to know how ineffective treatments are (even for the best treatments, usually more than 90% of patients are not helped.) But more generally, I think it's amazing that I can't even decipher the titles of most of the studies they present, but I couldn't find a single thing on The NNT.com that I didn't understand. There are definitely some down sides to people getting medical advice from the web, but this site is reliable, straightforward and useful.
