SynthesisJournal of the National Cancer Institute2025
Expected vs observed effect sizes for survival endpoints in phase 3 oncology trials.
Synthesis in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- AI-based augmentation of oncology clinical trials.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2026Review
- Review
- Sieving for gold: external comparator studies to prioritize drugs for late-stage clinical trial.Journal of comparative effectiveness research · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
More than half of randomized phase 3 oncology trials fail to meet their primary endpoints, often despite favorable results from phase 1 and phase 2 trials. One potential reason for this high failure rate is effect size selection practices for powering these trials. In a systematic review of phase 3 oncology trials published in 10 top medical journals in 2023, we identified a pattern of effect size overestimation for survival endpoints, where the expected hazard ratios (average HR = 0.66) were stronger than those observed in the primary analyses (average HR = 0.72; 2-sided signed-rank test P = .0035). Across 111 trials, 82 of 143 (57.3%) observed hazard ratios for primary survival endpoints were weaker than expected; among 5 journals with 2023 impact factors between 9.9 and 56.7 (vs 58.7-98.4 for the top 5 journals), this ratio was 70.2% (59/84). These results suggest that phase 3 oncology trials are likely underpowered, contributing to the high failure rates in oncology research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.