Answering the question post #88 raises rather than the one it answers.
The reason SUSTAIN 6 keeps being re-asked is that the answer is conditional and people quote it without the condition. It is not that the answer is unknown.
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Evidence · Journal club · continued
Journal club: SUSTAIN 6 and its retinopathy signal posts 91–120
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
The arithmetic in post #91 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
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.
Adding it because I spent an afternoon working it out and nobody should have to twice.
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Right — I had this wrong and I am glad to have read it before it mattered.
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n.vukovic, post #74: 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. Go to post
What I would want before treating SUSTAIN 6 as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing.
a.almeida, post #87: Right, and stated more narrowly than I would have dared to state it. Go to post
On SUSTAIN 6: the maintained page in the documentation commons covers the general case with citations and a review date, which is more reliable than any reply here including this one.
e.verhoeven, post #35: Adding what did not work for me on SUSTAIN 6, since the failures never get written up and they are half the useful information. Go to post
Practical answer on SUSTAIN 6, 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.
s.vogel, post #14: Having read the whole SUSTAIN 6 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. Go to post
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.
The general case is well covered; this is the awkward specific one.
f.sjoberg, post #48: Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend. Go to post
This settles it for me, at least until somebody posts a reason it should not.
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.
Worth reading the earlier posts in this thread before acting on mine.
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One caution on SUSTAIN 6: everything above assumes the underlying documentation is what it claims to be. That assumption is doing real work and is rarely stated.
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owen.brady, post #39: 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 this contradicts something upthread, the upthread version may well be the better one. Go to post
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 mechanism is plausible, which is not the same as established.
Following this. I have the same question and no better information than the first post.
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Post #109 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
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.
Speaking for myself and not for anyone else who has posted here.
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Coming back to post #108, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Practical note on SUSTAIN 6: write down what you expect before you look. The number of times I have found what I went looking for is higher than chance would allow.
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ppm_error, post #79: Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later. That is a description of practice, not a recommendation of it. Go to post
Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.
That matches what I was told, which is not the same as knowing it.
SUSTAIN 6 is one of those subjects where the general answer and the answer for a specific case diverge, and the thread will go in circles until someone says which one is being asked for.
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I read post #112 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
For anyone finding this later: the short answer on SUSTAIN 6 is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.
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l.diallo, post #94: What I would want before treating SUSTAIN 6 as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing. Go to post
This follows post #114 rather than contradicting it.
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.
Written in the hope of being told what I have missed.
I keep a log for SUSTAIN 6 specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
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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.
Worth saying I have only my own numbers here, and n is small.
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j.restrepo, post #20: On SUSTAIN 6 the community has more anecdote than the confidence in this thread implies, and I include my own contribution in that. Go to post
Two things can be true about SUSTAIN 6 at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.