SleepDoc_PDX said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Agreed, and the size of the effect matters as much as its existence. Something real and small gets treated here as though it were real and decisive.

I would rather be corrected than agreed with, if it comes to it.

SleepDoc_PDX said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Thank you — that is the clearest version of this I have read, and I have read a lot of them. Sending this to two other people who asked me the same thing last week.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. 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.

NurseKim_ATL said:

It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.

Second this. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.

NurseKim_ATL said:

It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.

Coming at NurseKim_ATL’s question from a different direction. 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.