Revisiting: Journal club: SURMOUNT-OSA and a hard endpoint in a soft field posts 91–120
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
On SURMOUNT-OSA I would separate what is worth knowing from what is worth acting on. The first list is long and the second is short, and conflating them is how threads get heated.
Fair, and the limits you put on it are the part I will remember.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
Answering the question post #90 raises rather than the one it answers.
Reporting rather than recommending, on SURMOUNT-OSA. What happened is above. Whether it should have is a different question and not one I am qualified to answer.
Where I part company with post #95, and it is a narrow parting.
The failure mode on SURMOUNT-OSA is boring rather than dramatic. It is almost always the step everyone assumes was done correctly because it is too simple to get wrong.
Adding the measurement that post #96 says would settle it.
Practical answer on SURMOUNT-OSA, 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.
Confirming post #96 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
The version of SURMOUNT-OSA 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.
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.
Post #102 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
For anyone finding this later: the short answer on SURMOUNT-OSA is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.
I read post #101 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later.
I have no interest in any supplier named above.
I came in to disagree and I am leaving without a disagreement.
The confident answers on SURMOUNT-OSA and the well-sourced answers are not the same answers, which is the most useful thing I have learned reading this category.
I would put moderate confidence on the mainstream reading of SURMOUNT-OSA and no more. That is not scepticism for its own sake; it is where the sourcing actually stops.
Post #108 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.
The uncertainty is in the assumption, not in the calculation.
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.
I looked this up rather than remembered it, which is the right order.
Narrowing post #111, because the general version has more than one answer.
A note on how SURMOUNT-OSA gets discussed rather than on SURMOUNT-OSA itself: the confident posts get the replies and the careful ones get ignored, and the careful ones have been right more often.
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.
If that reads as pedantic, it is, and it has saved me twice.
Answering the question post #116 raises rather than the one it answers.
My position on SURMOUNT-OSA is current rather than settled. I have revised it once already and I expect to again, so treat it accordingly.
Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later.
The interesting part of this is the exception, and I do not understand the exception.
The arithmetic on SURMOUNT-OSA is the easy part and it is where the errors are, which is an uncomfortable combination. Show your working and someone will catch it.