TrialTracker_MD said:

Reporting back with a partial result, because a partial result is still better than silence.

This answered a question I did not know how to ask.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any. If nothing would, the discussion is not about evidence, and it is better to say so early than to spend nine posts discovering it.

Found this through search years later and it is still the best discussion of the question, so adding one thing. Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look. It is a small discipline and it changes what you notice.

Dr.ReproEndo said:

It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any.

Coming at Dr.ReproEndo’s question from a different direction. It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false. If nothing would look different, it is not a claim about the world and no amount of discussion will settle it.

One concrete data point for the thread. One practical note: write down what you did and when, before you need it. Reconstructing a timeline from memory three months later is how people end up unable to answer the one question that would have resolved it.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.