This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Post #118 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.
If anyone can point at the primary source I would be grateful.
People arriving without having read it should be welcome and should say so, because a question from someone who has not read it frequently exposes an assumption everyone else made.
Post #120 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
The most useful thing anyone has posted about SURMOUNT-1 in this category was a table of what had been measured and by whom. That is what I would want again.
Building on post #122 rather than restating it.
On SURMOUNT-1, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.
If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.
Post #124 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
The figures usually contain the finding and the text usually contains the interpretation. Separating them for the first twenty minutes is a discipline worth keeping.
I would be interested in a counterexample if anyone has one.
Two claims get bundled together under SURMOUNT-1 and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.
Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.
Clear enough that I do not think I have a follow-up, which is unusual.
I changed my mind about SURMOUNT-1 after someone here asked me for the source and I could not produce one. That is worth saying out loud because it is the ordinary way it happens.
Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later.
Reading order that works for these sessions: registry entry, methods, baseline table, primary result, then abstract last. Reading the abstract first anchors everything that follows.
The rule of thumb is fine; the edge cases are where it earns its keep.
Post #131 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
SURMOUNT-1 is a good example of a question where the honest answer is boring and the interesting answers are unsupported. I would go with boring.
Second this, and I would have said it less carefully.
What I want from this SURMOUNT-1 thread is the list of things that would need to be true for the claim to hold. If we can write that list, we can check it.
Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.
Reading this SURMOUNT-1 thread as someone who came in with a fixed view: the third and seventh replies moved me and the confident ones did not.
Post #135 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
On SURMOUNT-1, I would rather understate and be corrected upward than overstate and be quoted. That is a house style here and it is a good one.
Since SURMOUNT-1 keeps coming up, it should probably be a maintained page rather than a recurring thread. I am happy to draft it if someone with more direct experience will review it.
The most common failure mode is spending fifty minutes on the effect size and ten on the population. Reversing that ratio would improve most sessions.
Checked the SURMOUNT-1 claim against the primary source this morning. It survives, with a narrower scope than the version quoted here. Posting the narrower scope.
Everything in post #146 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Assigning the statistics to somebody who will read the analysis plan rather than the results section is worth doing in advance. It is the part that gets skipped by default.
I have separated what I observed from what I concluded, which does not always happen.
I read the earlier replies on SURMOUNT-1 twice before writing this, because I had assumed the opposite and wanted to be sure I was disagreeing with what was said rather than what I expected.
Post #146 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
A note on how SURMOUNT-1 gets discussed rather than on SURMOUNT-1 itself: the confident posts get the replies and the careful ones get ignored, and the careful ones have been right more often.