The retatrutide phase 2 paper and why phase 2 is not phase 3

Started 14 November 2024 · 18 replies · 218 hearts · read 3k times

PetuaKampala, UG · 14 November 2024

1.7 years ago

A question rather than an update: The retatrutide phase 2 paper and why phase 2 is not phase 3

I have read the paper and I am not sure I have understood it.

Evidence question. I would rather have an honest "we do not know" than a confident answer, and confident answers are all I have been able to find so far.

I have been trying to trace a claim back to its source and every trail ends at a summary of a summary, which is itself informative.

I would like to understand the limits of this properly rather than the headline, because the headline is the part everybody already knows.

Since I have put a figure in the title I should stand behind it: 2, exactly, and I checked before posting rather than after.

Thank you for reading. Careful answers welcome; confident ones I can already get elsewhere.

OskarWarsaw, PL

What surprised me was how readable most of these are once you stop being intimidated by the first page.

HattieExeter, UK

Oskar, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

The paper we read last month had a population nothing like most of this circle, which does not make it useless and does limit what it tells us.

10me too 8

NissaHaifa, IL

Oskar said something I want to sit with for a second.

I would say do read the supplementary material occasionally. Twice now the thing I wanted to know was only in there.

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

Stepping in to say that the sourcing reference pages on this site say plainly what can and cannot be verified, and that is narrower than a recommendation on purpose.

PádraigGalway, IE

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

12me too 3

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

The registry entry is worth checking against the published paper, and on one occasion the outcomes we were reading were not the ones originally listed.

EphraimBrooklyn, NY

My experience is that the group is much better at this than I am alone, because somebody always spots the thing I skimmed.

PrunellaBury St Edmunds, UK

Something practical: I write three sentences about each paper afterwards and I now have two years of notes I actually refer back to.

BeaDublin, IE

Something worth knowing: the difference between a trial and an observational study changes what you can conclude, and I did not know that two years ago.

JuniperMachynlleth, UK

#10

My reading has got slower and better. I get through a quarter of what I used to and I understand considerably more of it.

JunoBrighton, UK

#11

I found the discussion sections the least reliable part of most papers and the results tables the most.

TarqWindsor, UK

#12

What I would flag is that a study in a different population may not transfer, and that is a limitation rather than a criticism.

12me too 2

IzoldaVilnius, LT

#13

Somebody here asked what would change our minds, at the start of a session, and it improved the discussion enormously.

GilTel Aviv, IL

#14

Izolda, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

What I have taken from this group is mostly humility about how much is genuinely settled.

StellanMalmö, SE

#15

Izolda — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I would encourage anybody nervous about joining to come and say nothing for a few sessions. That is what I did for four months.

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

#16

The session where we read a paper about something none of us takes was the most useful, because nobody was defending a position.

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

#17

I am leaving this open because the reading group will come back to this paper in the autumn and I would like the discussion in one place.

25me too 9

CasperOdense, DK

#18

Nothing here is medical advice, and a paper is not a recommendation for any individual person including the ones in it.