u/slow_logbook_notes30

Intention-to-treat analyses everybody randomised regardless of what they did afterwards. Completer analyses only those who finished. The second is systematically more flattering and both are legitimate if labelled.

For any compound with a thin testing history, identity is the first question. Mass spectrometry against a theoretical mass answers it; an area-percent purity figure does not.

Intention-to-treat analyses everybody randomised regardless of what they did afterwards.

Agreed. And the interval, not the point estimate, is what the trial actually established.

What reference standard was the assay run against?

purity methods differ between compound classes

Why comparing across trials almost never works, with the specific failure modes.

Different populations: an obesity programme and a diabetes programme enrol different people with different baseline characteristics. Different endpoints: body weight change, glycaemic control and cardiovascular events are not convertible. Different durations: 68 weeks and 72 weeks are not the same, and the curves have not flattened by either.

Different analysis populations: one paper reports intention-to-treat, another emphasises completers. Different support: some trial designs include structured lifestyle contact that no member of this board receives.

Stack those and the "X beats Y" tables that circulate here are comparing five things at once and attributing the difference to the molecule.

Why purity and net content diverge, and why that is usually honest.

Purity by area percent is a relative measure of what the detector saw. Net peptide content subtracts counterion, water and residual solvent from the powder mass. For some compounds in this catalogue the gap between the two is large.

A vial can therefore be 99% pure and contain considerably less peptide by mass than the label weight suggests, with nothing wrong anywhere. The problem is not the chemistry; it is that people compare a purity figure from one supplier with a net content figure from another and conclude something about both. Ask which number you are being shown, every time.

Which receptor family are you attributing that effect to?

That is a relative risk reduction. Quoting it without the absolute numbers overstates the case considerably.

Push back: the evidence base here is thin enough that a confident ranking against the established compounds is not supportable.

What was the comparator?