Confirming post #5 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person. A codebook describing each field takes twenty minutes and is what makes the file usable by anyone but you. Most shared datasets here do not have one. The literature is thinner on this than the confidence in the thread…
Whether an aggregate is worth publishing at all: a disputed topic — does this still hold? I have a specific reason for asking rather than idle curiosity, and the context is below.
An honest uncertainty about Whether an aggregate rather than a disguised assertion.
I do not know the answer and I have not been able to find one. What I have is the shape of the question, which may be worth more than my guess at the answer.
The opening post is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
The most useful dataset this community could hold is boring: lot, supplier, service, method, date, result. That is enough to answer most of the questions people ask badly.
On balance I think that is right, and I would not bet much on it.
I would call the community position on Whether an aggregate likely rather than established, and I would be comfortable defending that hedge.
Confirming post #5 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
A codebook describing each field takes twenty minutes and is what makes the file usable by anyone but you. Most shared datasets here do not have one.
The literature is thinner on this than the confidence in the thread implies.
Limitations of datasets: all community-collected data has limitations. The population is self-selected (people in this community are not representative of all people using these compounds). Reporting bias is real (remarkable outcomes get reported; mundane outcomes do not).
It took me longer than it should have to see that.
Self-reported, unblinded, self-selected data has known biases and is still worth collecting, provided every one of those words appears in the description.
Marking my uncertainty on Whether an aggregate explicitly. I am confident about the direction, much less confident about the size, and not confident at all that it generalises past the case in the first post.
Understood. Thank you for being specific about the limits of it.
Coming back to post #8, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Where a value is derived rather than measured, mark it. Derived columns get treated as observations the moment the file leaves your hands.
I would not lead a decision with this, but I would not ignore it either.
The reason Whether an aggregate 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.
Post #14 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Units in the column header, always, and the same units down the whole column. Mixed units in one field is the commonest defect in shared spreadsheets here.
If the premise is wrong, everything after it is decoration.
I read post #12 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Aggregating first-hand accounts does not produce evidence of the kind a trial produces. It produces a description of who chose to post, which is a real thing and a different thing.
Agreed on Whether an aggregate, with one qualification that I think matters. The reasoning holds for the case as described. Change the starting assumption and it does not, and the starting assumption is the part nobody states.
Publishing the raw records alongside the summary is what makes a dataset checkable. A summary alone asks for trust that nobody has earned.
Correct me on the arithmetic if it is wrong; I would rather know.
Post #18 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Units in the column header, always, and the same units down the whole column. Mixed units in one field is the commonest defect in shared spreadsheets here.
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