Research reading group
One paper a fortnight, read properly.
16 conversations331 membersEvery other Sunday, 16:00 UK
Facilitator — reading group
Sunil
“Read the paper, not the headline about the paper.”
I am a librarian by trade, which is a better qualification for this than it sounds. Every fortnight the reading group takes one paper and reads it properly — the actual population, the actual comparator, the actual primary endpoint, the withdrawals, who funded it. About a third of the time the conclusion everyone repeats turns out to be several steps further than the paper went.
We have worked through the STEP programme, SURMOUNT-1 and -4, SURPASS-2, SELECT, FLOW, and the retatrutide phase 2 paper, plus a few small studies that got enormous coverage and should not have. I keep a plain-language one-page summary for each in the guides and I try very hard to include the "and here is what this does not tell us" section, because that section is the one that keeps people out of trouble.
I also hold quality-and-testing, which is where the third-party analysis conversation lives — Janoshik, Medutest, PeptideMeter, VendorInvestigate, what a certificate of analysis is and is not, and the uncomfortable fact that a purity number on a document tells you about a sample and not about a supply chain. I am not a chemist and say so. Several members are, and they correct me, which is how it should work.
Circles Sunil holds
Peptides beyond GLP-1
Where the evidence thins out, and saying so.
14 conversations155 membersMonthly, last Sunday, 16:00 UK
Quality and testing
What analysis can tell you, and what it cannot.
15 conversations162 membersMonthly, second Sunday, 16:00 UK
Recent call recaps
Phase two is not phase three
Research reading group
The risks nobody can remove, said again
Sourcing safely
The kidney paper and what a composite endpoint hides
Research reading group
The argument about the word verified
Sourcing safely
The cardiovascular trial, and relative against absolute
Research reading group
The withdrawal paper, read without the panic
Research reading group
Guides Sunil reviewed
clinical
Cardiovascular outcomes: what SELECT showed
The trial that changed how clinicians talk about these drugs — who was in it, what it actually found, how big the effect was in plain terms, and the claims stacked on top of it.
clinicalhow-to
Reading a trial without a PhD
The method our reading group uses on every paper — five questions, in order, that let anyone tell what a study actually showed from what people are claiming it showed.
practicalhow-to
Reconstitution: doing the maths together
The arithmetic behind mixing a powder vial, worked slowly, plus the decimal-point errors that have put people in hospital and the limits nobody can calculate away.
sourcing
Sourcing outside a prescription: the honest risks
The page we would rather you read than a seller’s FAQ — what buying outside a prescription actually exposes you to, said plainly and without a sales pitch.
sourcinghow-to
Spotting a bad source
A working method for telling apart the signals that feel reassuring from the ones that actually carry information — and an honest account of what diligence cannot rule out.
sourcing
What purity actually means
A purity figure is a statement about one sample, measured one way, against one detector — here is what it covers, what it silently omits, and why content is a different question.
sourcinghow-to
Reading a certificate of analysis, line by line
A field method for reading an analysis document properly — which fields carry information, which are decoration, and the checks that need no chemistry at all.
sourcing
Third-party testing: who does what
What an independent laboratory contributes, how the testing and publishing programmes members cite differ from one another, and why who commissioned a test changes what it means.
starting
What these medicines actually do
The mechanism in plain language, which drug is which, what the major trials found, and an honest accounting of where the evidence runs out.
symptoms
Hair shedding: what is known
Why hair often thins a few months into rapid weight change, what the trials and the dermatology literature actually say, and what members found while waiting it out.
symptoms
Gallbladder: what the data says
Gallstones turn up more often on these medicines than on placebo, and rapid weight loss causes them anyway. What the evidence supports, and the pain pattern to know.