I wish publications would wait for Phase 2 data before publishing sensationalist headlines like this. In this case, they have yet to even complete enrollment for the Phase 1 trial.
Most Phase I work is exploratory and things like statistical rigor and blinding participants are ignored (and for good reason, those things don't come cheap). Phase I data is useful for toxicity data, but I wouldn't trust Phase I efficacy data in the least.
You're exactly right. In grad school, a friend of mine working on a PhD. in biological sciences once casually told me he'd discovered 4 new antibiotics in the course of his research. Of course, I was floored, until I thought to ask what his definition of "antibiotic" was. Turns out that at the stage he was working on, all it meant was the compound killed bacteria, not that it was at all useful for treating infections.
