<<<"I suspect that they do push and generally the FDA pushes back.">>>
I still am puzzled by this. I have read a number of FDA stats reviews, and I have seen more than once where the alternate Cox did produce a beter p-value than log-rank.
But I have never seen the statistician reply that he/she is not the least bit surprised, given the lower hurdle. And they are at liberty to write what they want, and do tend to be descriptive. Instead they simply write about alpha, etc, and go on to comment about the co-variates nevertheless.
Odd ?
"....on the biotech battle-field, you need some élan...."