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Cube Cubis's avatar

i have lost complete faith in medicine

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norstadt's avatar

Is the J&J trial's randomization credible when 96 placebo recipients "terminated prematurely", but only 49 vaccine recipients did (Fig. S3)? https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2101544/suppl_file/nejmoa2101544_appendix.pdf

Oddly, these are almost the same numbers as the people who withdrew from the Pfizer trial after dose 2 (95 vs 48, see Fig. 1). https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

Edit: As Tom suggests below, unblinding errors probably explain the imbalance. I've heard elsewhere that trial participants sometimes figure out which group they are in, and placebo recipients are more likely to withdraw. The odd coincidence of Pfizer and J&J withdrawal numbers (one less per study arm) remains.

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