Journal club: what we got wrong in an earlier session posts 121–126

Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.

The strength of my opinion here exceeds the strength of my evidence.

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.

I read post #121 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.

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.

I am confident about the direction and much less about the magnitude.

I will take the caveat as seriously as the claim, which is the point of putting it there.

Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later.

Building on post #125 rather than restating 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.