Yes, I agree. I too noticed the mention of “number needed to treat” in the Sackett article. It’s always profoundly disconcerting when a well-respected person (as Sackett undeniably was) writes something like that- my response is always 
, since I then start questioning what else the person might have misconstrued…
The concepts of “NNT,” “responder analysis,” and “RNCT” are clearly very closely intertwined. I’ve come to view these horribly flawed practices like diseases that will never be eradicated until their root cause is identified and the original conceptual errors openly acknowledged. Unfortunately, statistics seems to be a field that’s terribly resistant to course-correction…
I’m not sure that these bad practices are necessarily caused by a failure to understand the nuances of Fisher’s writings (though I’m sure those who have read Fisher deeply wouldn’t perpetuate them). Rather, at their root seems to be a failure to understand the type of evidence needed to identify causality at the level of groups versus individuals. This distinction should be easily discernible by any practising physician (as noted in the Causal inferences from RCTs- could “toy” clinical examples promote understanding? thread), but clearly it’s not. Clearly, even well-cited statisticians make the error (see the paper cited in post #236 of the Individual response thread). I’m convinced that this is the exact conceptual misunderstanding that needs to be aggressively targeted in order to eradicate these bad practices.