Journal club: SURMOUNT-1, read without the press release posts 31–60
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Adding a data point of agreement rather than a data point.
Adding the measurement that post #31 says would settle it.
Having read the whole SURMOUNT-1 thread before replying: the question in the first post has not actually been answered yet, and three of us have answered a nearby one instead.
Post #30 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
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.
Distinguishing three things in the SURMOUNT-1 discussion that keep getting used interchangeably: the observation, the proposed mechanism, and the recommendation that gets attached to both.
The strongest argument against my own position on SURMOUNT-1, stated as well as I can state it, since nobody else has yet.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
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.
Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.
On post #34 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
An update on my earlier SURMOUNT-1 post: the pattern held for another six weeks and then stopped, which I did not predict and cannot explain.
The practical version of SURMOUNT-1 is three sentences long. The rigorous version is three pages and reaches the same conclusion with the conditions attached.
Post #40 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
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.
Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.
I think the SURMOUNT-1 question is answerable and has not been answered, which is a more optimistic position than most of this thread.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
Adding a null result on SURMOUNT-1. I looked, carefully, and found nothing, and null results deserve posting precisely because they never are.
The arithmetic in post #42 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
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 would rather this thread reach "we do not know" about SURMOUNT-1 than reach a confident answer that nobody can support when asked.
An hour is enough for one paper read properly and not enough for two read partly. The temptation is always to add the second.
The conclusion is tentative; the arithmetic underneath it is not.
Everything in post #44 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
SURMOUNT-1 has been discussed here with more heat than it deserves, mostly because two definitions have been in play the whole time.
Narrowing post #47, because the general version has more than one answer.
A note on scope: what I am saying about SURMOUNT-1 applies to the case in the first post and I would not extend it further without checking.
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.
That distinction has done more work for me than anything else in this category.
This follows post #50 rather than contradicting it.
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.
A modest claim, modestly supported.
Noted, and thank you for writing it out rather than summarising it.
Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.
The version of SURMOUNT-1 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.
I read post #56 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
I have no financial interest in anything named in this thread and I want to say so before I comment on SURMOUNT-1, because it is the sort of subject where it matters.
Agreed on all of that, and I have nothing to add to it.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
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.
I have kept the units in throughout, for the obvious reason.