TirzTom said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. Pushing back on the anecdote-stacking. Twenty people reporting the same thing is twenty samples from the same self-selected pool, not twenty independent confirmations.

TirzTom said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

Agreed, and one caution: a single measurement is not a measurement. Anything that moves day to day needs a trend before it means anything at all.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

TirzTom said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

This is exactly what I could not find anywhere else. Adding it to my notes with a link back to this thread.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

Dr.SleepRoch said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Second this.