1 Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Coordinator, International Study of Kidney Disease in Children, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, New York, New York 10461
Big numbers are always impressive, and the reader of medical journals is biased to remember those articles which refer to large samples. The purpose of this letter is to counteract this tendency and, hopefully, to demonstrate that big numbers, like small numbers, may be misleading if generated and interpreted in an indiscriminate fashion.
It is common knowledge that a clinical trial should ask specific questions, and should be based on simultaneous, properly controlled observations, made on a well-defined, homogeneous population.