Hello Nathan. Thanks for the comment. I think the only key place where I would disagree with you is what you said here
If, as seems likely the forthcoming RCT downgrades SM a lot and the HLI team should have seen this coming, why didn’t they act?
As I said in response to Greg (to which I see you’ve replied) we use the conventional scientific approach of relying on the sweep of existing data—rather than on our predictions of what future evidence (from a single study) will show. Indeed, I’m not sure how easily these would come apart: I would base my predictions substantially on the existing data, which we’ve already gathered in our meta-analysis (obviously, it’s a matter of debate as to how to synthesise data from different sources and opinions will differ). I don’t have any reason to assume the new RCT will show effects substantially lower than the existing evidence, but perhaps others are aware of something we’re not.
Hello Nathan. Thanks for the comment. I think the only key place where I would disagree with you is what you said here
As I said in response to Greg (to which I see you’ve replied) we use the conventional scientific approach of relying on the sweep of existing data—rather than on our predictions of what future evidence (from a single study) will show. Indeed, I’m not sure how easily these would come apart: I would base my predictions substantially on the existing data, which we’ve already gathered in our meta-analysis (obviously, it’s a matter of debate as to how to synthesise data from different sources and opinions will differ). I don’t have any reason to assume the new RCT will show effects substantially lower than the existing evidence, but perhaps others are aware of something we’re not.
Yeah for what it’s worth it wasn’t clear to me until later that this was only like 10% of the weighting on your analysis.