Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person. Both are real; they answer different questions and get quoted as if they were the same one.

sean_dublin said:

The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person.

Second this. Nothing to add that would improve it.

sean_dublin said:

The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false. If nothing would look different, it is not a claim about the world and no amount of discussion will settle it.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

One concrete data point for the thread. The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the same conditions. Nobody wants that answer and it is still the answer.

Reporting back.

Closing this out: the trough rather than the peak explains the pattern I was seeing on day six, which I had been blaming on the vial.