I know many of you are much smarter than I.. I'm analyzing data for an RCT with relatively small n (110). The outcome is mean drinks / day. At baseline, the between group difference in mean drinks per day is over 2. Not quite statistically significant, but ... There are pretty extreme outliers, but we went back to the original data and the numbers are what the numbers are. My view is that this so confounds the interpretation of intervention effects. In a fixed effects, or within subject change framework, the higher mean in one group at baseline essentially means there is more room to reduce over time. In an ANCOVA type framework, any between group differences are largely moot (unless they are much larger and/or are different in terms of direction at follow-up than at baseline. The investigators are not especially happy with my conclusion. Any insight or wisdom would be much appreciated.