[2026 update] Journal club: what we got wrong in an earlier session

Journal club: what we got wrong in an earlier session — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.

Bringing a claim rather than a paper, because the claim is the thing circulating.

The statement gets made confidently and cites STEP 4 (JAMA, 2021) when pressed. I have read the trial and I cannot find the sentence it is supposed to rest on.

Either I am reading the wrong section or the claim has drifted from the source. I would like to know which before I repeat the correction anywhere.

Reading a preprint in a session is fine provided the status is stated in the first minute and stays in the summary.

That is a description of practice, not a recommendation of it.

Following, with nothing to contribute beyond having asked the same thing elsewhere.

Picking up post #2: that is the part I would want checked first.

A session that ends with a list of what remains unresolved is more useful than one that ends with a verdict. The unresolved list is what feeds the next reading.

Bringing the previous paper on the same question makes the session much better and doubles the preparation. Worth doing every third session rather than every one.

Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.

Post #4 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.

The baseline characteristics table is the single most useful page for the questions that get asked here, because it tells you who the result applies to.

Not disagreeing with anyone above, just adding the bit I keep having to look up.

I read post #8 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.

Session format: read the paper before posting. The discussion is much better when everyone has. Start with the estimand and population, then methods, then results, then limitations. That order makes critique coherent.

The evidence for this is thinner than the way I have phrased it suggests.

That is a cleaner way of putting what I was circling around.