A critique that turned out to be unfair, retracted by its author posts 31–39

Criticism is more useful when it is narrower. "The trial answers a different question from the one being asked" is actionable; "the trial is flawed" is not.

That is the shape of it. The detail is where I would expect to be corrected.

The pre-specified endpoint being a weaker proxy than you would like is a real criticism. It is a smaller one than saying the result was chosen after the fact.

Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.

I had read the opposite somewhere and cannot now find where, which tells me something.

Picking up post #31: that is the part I would want checked first.

Marking my uncertainty on critique explicitly. I am confident about the direction, much less confident about the size, and not confident at all that it generalises past the case in the first post.

Practical answer on critique, since the theoretical one is upthread: do the simplest check first, write down the result, and only then decide whether the complicated explanation is needed. It usually is not.

The strongest critiques cite the section they rely on. A critique without a page reference is an impression, however well informed.

If anyone can point at the primary source I would be grateful.

Worth separating two things that post #35 runs together.

The version of critique that circulates here is a simplification of a simplification. It is not wrong, but it has lost the conditions under which it holds, and those conditions are where the interesting cases live.

This follows post #35 rather than contradicting it.

Two people in this thread mean different things by critique and are disagreeing about the definition while believing they are disagreeing about the facts. Worth pausing to define it.

I had written a reply contradicting post #35 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

A critique should end with what would change your mind. Without that it is a position rather than an argument.