It's unfortunate that this type of presentation was made which...

It's  unfortunate that this type of presentation was made which was very misleading.

"...Scientists’ disappointment at this finding soon turned into disbelief when Gauthier went on to present a subgroup analysis that held no statistical credence yet purported to show a strong benefit on cognition and brain atrophy.
Many researchers in the room, and later in the hallways, were dismayed not only at the way the data were being parsed, but also at media stories about the drug’s ostensible “success.” Outlets such as The Times, New Scientist, and the Huffington Post variously announced the arrival of the first drug to halt Alzheimer’s, or that the drug slowed disease by 80 percent, even while leading Alzheimer’s researchers at AAIC were challenging the company’s leader, Claude Wischik, for overstating the trial’s result.
Some media stories ran before the scientific session had even taken place and leaders in biostatistics had a chance to see and discuss the subgroup analysis. That is because press briefings at AAIC are held at 7 a.m. the day of the formal scientific presentation, which in this case happened at 4:30 p.m. Reporters who had attended the press briefing on the trial data and wrote more accurately were left scratching their heads at how their colleagues could have gotten the story so wrong.

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Suspect Subgroup Analysis
What was wrong with the subgroup analysis? Gauthier told the audience that about 15 percent of the 891 patients in the trial were not taking standard therapy, namely memantine or one of three acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. A pre-specified subgroup analysis suggested that among this group of 136 people, those taking 75 or 125 mg LMTM twice a day had a slower cognitive and functional decline over the 15 months of the trial. He said their brains atrophied less, as well, which he took as an indication that neurodegeneration was slowed. While this analysis prompted the sensational media reports, experts said that it was flawed in two important ways.
First, the researchers lacked any statistical basis for it. They had, in trial parlance, “spent their alpha on the primary analysis,” said Aisen. Wischik conceded that this was the case to biostatisticians and trialists who asked him directly after Gauthier’s talk, and he confirmed it with Alzforum.
...
That aside, the secondary analysis used an inappropriate placebo group, said clinicians at the conference. It compared people on LMTM therapy alone with the placebo group for the whole trial, which includes people taking standard AD drugs. “The correct analysis is to compare the LMTM monotherapy group against people on placebo who are also not on standard AD drugs,” said Aisen. Experts Alzforum spoke with at AAIC agreed that the comparison with the placebo group was inappropriate. “Comparing all control subjects to a subgroup of active subjects is like comparing apples to oysters,” wrote Suzanne Hendrix, Pentara Corporation, to Alzforum (see full comment below).
Gauthier explained that there were too few people in the placebo group who were not on AD drugs to run that analysis. His data slide showed that of 54 people who started in this group, 34 completed the trial. By comparison, 26 and 25 people on the low and high doses of LMTM monotherapy, respectively, completed the trial. Others commented to Alzforum that TauRx could have done the analysis, but chose not to because the results would have missed statistical significance. “If you were to publish this data, you’d have to do it with the correct placebo group,” said Aisen...."


http://www.alzforum.org/news/confer...ase-3-trial-tau-drug-lmtm-did-not-work-period