raj_cambridge said:

Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look.

True, with the qualification that this is a self-selected group. The people for whom it did not work post less, and that shapes everything we think we know.

raj_cambridge said:

Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look.

Thank you — that is the clearest version of this I have read, and I have read a lot of them. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

PeptideChemSF said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Same experience, arrived at from the opposite direction. The detail I would add is minor and it is already implied above.

PeptideChemSF said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. It helps to say which part of this you are uncertain about. A precise question gets a precise answer; a general one gets everybody’s favourite anecdote.