Niaspan v Zetia: "Yes, an interim analysis in an imaging trial CIMT, strikes me as uncommon, guess it was meant to save money. If Niaspan didn't show a meaningful effect on IMT, it makes sense to stop the trial and forget about it, if it was more effective, I assume we would have heard about it."
Although I have no skin in this game (except the bragging rights if my prediction is correct) I would generally agree that we ought to have heard something if the interim analysis was good news, with this exception. This was a VA study and those VA people, 1. could care less about saving money (in fact are incetivized to spend ALL the money that they are budgeted), and 2. the VA has no business incentive to get the news out. The PI might want to squeeze as much PR out of his findings by waiting for an "official announcement" at some scientific meeting.
JM2C
aj
