What would actually change your mind about a compound you are sceptical of?

Fair question to ask of the sceptics here, myself included, since we ask it of everyone else.

If you think BPC-157 probably does nothing in humans — what specifically would change that? If the answer is "nothing", we should admit it.

Good challenge. Mine is answerable, so here it is.

A randomised, placebo-controlled trial in humans, with a pre-registered primary endpoint that is objective rather than self-reported, adequately powered, run by a group with no commercial interest in the result, and published including its pre-registration so I can check the endpoint did not move.

That is not an unreasonable bar. It is the ordinary bar. It is what any approved drug has cleared, several times.

I would also accept two independent replications of the animal work by groups with no connection to the originating programme, as evidence that the underlying biology is real — though that would move me on the biology and not on whether it does anything for a human tendon.

Mine is the same with one addition: I want the trial to have been capable of being negative.

Pre-registration matters more than sample size for this reason. A study that can be reported as positive whatever happens has told me nothing regardless of what it found, and a great deal of the literature on these compounds is like that without anybody having intended it.

Adding one that is less about the study and more about me: I would update meaningfully on a well-conducted trial that came out negative for a compound I already expected to be negative.

Sounds like nothing. It is not — it would tell me the field is capable of producing publishable negative results at all, which would substantially raise my trust in the positive ones.

As somebody on the more enthusiastic end, I should answer the reverse.

What would move me toward the sceptics: a properly conducted human trial that came out negative. I would want to actually accept that rather than reaching for the dose or the population or the formulation, which I notice is what happens every time.

Writing that down now so I cannot pretend later.

That is the best answer in the thread and it cost you the most to give. Noted with respect.

Worth saying that "what would change your mind, stated in advance and in public" is close to the whole of intellectual honesty, and it is remarkable how rarely anybody is asked.