ITT for beginners

Dear Heyerick et al.

Thank you for your lovely study regarding the use of hops extract in menopausal women. Please note, however, that when you claim to use an Intention To Treat analysis, it’s considered obligatory to actually use the data from all patients, including the ones who drop out mid study. You don’t get to eliminate their data then go on to claim that your response may have been due to them dropping out.

This omission particularly suprises me, since as far as I can tell, you would have obtained a statistically significant response for your trial if you had analysed according to the ITT you claim to be using. Gaining a greater response for your active arm compared to placebo is much easier if you include the almost 25% of your placebo group who dropped out due to lack of effect.

Yrs in perplexity,

Stealthflower

Reference: Heyerick, et al. A first prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on the use of a standardised hop extract to alleviate menopausal discomforts. Maturitas 2006; 54:164-75.

Brief links from the coalmines

Random cool links, just in case you were missing me - I'm too busy even to mock, at the moment.

I don't care how improbable the Lancet thinks a tarantula farm is - I've visited ones in Malaysia already. Chillies and tarantulas - pain killers of the future?

And as an Australian, I take an unworthy satisfaction in knowing that bulky cane toads get arthritis.

Finally, if you've ever wanted to boast about your cutting edge scientific studies, you too can do particle physics.

And it's back to work for me.

EDIT: It's just been pointed out to me that you'll need to register to view the Lancet article on pain relief. It's a free signup, but I thought I should warn you just in case.

How not to gain credibility

It may come as a surprise, but when would-be suppliers send me information about a particular ingredient, I actually comply with our regulatory requirements and check up on it. Especially when, to the best of my knowledge, no peer reviewed evidence exists for the use you're suggesting.

So if you send me abstracts for studies in a journal I'm not familiar with, I'll look it up. And I'll notice that it doesn't have a print presence - it exists purely online. And that it isn't peer reviewed, it's 'refereed'. And that its articles don't seem to be listed on Medline.

Then I'll look a little closer, and find that all the articles I've been sent were written by someone who happens to be the 'Executive editor' of the journal. And that despite all the board being members of various universities, the positions they hold aren't listed anywhere (one of my co-workers suggests they may be the cleaners).

I'll also look at the editor's credentials, and find out that they actually have a very senior position in the company that's trying to sell me the ingredient in question, and that the website for the product lists testimonials from Australians using the product, despite neither its only ingredient nor the product itself being legal in Australia. And that the one piece of research listed apart from your own doesn't exist.

Then I'll see that of the 'over 300' technical and research papers the editor is supposed to have written, none of them have been listed on Medline. And that not only are they no longer with the university they claim to work for, they never held the position they claimed.

And my company won't be using your product.

Names omitted to protect my job; all details correct.

Part of what I do here is work as email network support. If there's an issue with the mail platform, and beyond a tier 1 support level, it comes up to me here. Issues with customer networks, mail clients, or software configuration, however, is not my problem.

But fucking try telling that to tier 1 support. Needless to say, whenever I get an escalation from the lower echelons here, I' naturally a bit suspicious. Not fair, maybe? But how I have learnt through hideous, hideous experience.

Today, was really no different. However, today had one of the worst escalations I've ever dealt with. Why the worst? Oh, I shall tell you.

So, this little old lady (I can tell these things, tell with my MIND!) gets put through to me - she hasn't received any email in over a week! Comes straight through to me, no introduction, no case referrence, no nother. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. So I start asking the customer a few preliminary questions, what does she do to check her mail, does she get any kind of errors, that sort of thing. I'm also checking out the network on my side, for a better picture of what's happening, while we talk.

It takes me a grand total of about, ooooh, let's say, thirty seconds to work out what was "wrong".

"...The reason you haven't received any email in the last week is because no-one has sent you any."

...

Yes, I'm fucking serious. This person was sent through to me, (apparently) level 2 technical support, 'cause someone confused "no email" with "email issue".

Now do you begin to see why I hate my coworkers so much?

(fake edit: here, for your amusement, is the brief missive I fired off to the "colleague" who originally escalated the customer...

"Hey there. In future, please complete all email troubleshooting steps before escalating an email issue to CTS. Namely, in this case, making sure there is actually an error, rather than the customer simply not having been sent email."

Owned.)

Here. Allow me to "rap" at you.

Alright, listen up, nubshats. I'd like to say I'm only going to explain this the once, but we all know that it ain't going to happen. None-the-fucking-less, there are just a few little things I'd just like to clear up for the general audience.

One: when the fuck was the last time where "No" wasn't an absolute? And I'm not talking about the weak as piss mumbling your mother utters as you're climbing on top of her after shovelling an armful of methadone into her. Have I missed some crazy-person memo where "No" now means "Maybe"? Or "Soon"? I don't care how much "customer service" bullshit gets bandied about, when I say "No", it's not a fucking invitation to debate. I don't say what I say for a laugh. If I did, a lot of it would be along the lines of "You really want to know how little I care?" and accompanied with a lot of laughter. It generally means that I'm providing an answer to a query or request, generally in a negative matter. No amount of bargaining, cajoling or shouting is going to get me to change my mind/policy/situation/laws of physics. Learn to fucking deal with it.

Two: I don't know about others, but I go to work to work. I don't like it, but I do it. I've come to accept the fact that I show up to a place I don't want to be at, to perform tasks I'd rather not do, in order to receive the money I can use to do the things that I'd rather be doing, in the time I'm at some place I'd rather be. That's just how the world works. Sure, I may have once believed that one day I might end up in a job doing what I loved; then I turned eight, and discovered Dungeons and Dragons. Then I turned eleven, and discovered breasts. But that's beside the point. The point is, however, is that there is no obligation or implied responsibility that owes you a profession of copious funds and limitless enjoyment. On the other hand, I've no commitment to enjoy the role I've found myself in. Which, I guess, is a very round-about way of saying: I'm sick and fucking tired of "team building" and "moral improving" bullshit! I'm here to work. I don't particularly want to be here, I don't particularly want to be friends with any of you. I don't need to participate in a survey that cost the department thousands of dollars to run to find out that most people here "arn't engaged". I could've fucking told you that beforehand, and that money could've been spent instead fucking engaging people. I also don't want to spend my personal time, or even fucking time I'm being penalised for, sitting and working out grade-school puzzle-book mazes for chocolate prizes. Fuck your "team building". There's this area, this zone, which is known as "The Mood". But "The Mood" is not around here. In fact, it's quite far, far away. And you know what? "The Mood" isn't a very big area, either. In fact, you might even say, I am not currently, nor will I ever be, in "The Mood".

And finally: I am your coworker, your superior, even your god. I am not, however, your friend. Fuck, I'm not even your associate, your colleague, your peer. If you manage to interact with me without pissing me off or making my life harder, I'll treat you with respect. But continually calling my line because you don't know how to do your job and want me to do it for you is going to fuck me right off. I know that we've been "asked" to help when asked, but the day I find someone to do my work for me is the day I entertain the notion of easing the ineptitude of something which happened 'cause a pizza delivery boy forgot to pull out fast enough. And if you decide to get petulant because I have the audacity to tell you how to do your fucking job in a condescending manner, well, that just means that the next time you annoy me with your added fucking trouble, then I am going to start making up answers. To amuse myself. Have fun with that, shitkick.

I guess, what I'm really trying to say, in the end, is that: I'm bored, angry, and arrogant. But fuck fuck it makes for some interesting times.