wendy_avl said:

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…

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. The objection nobody has made: this only works if the measurement is doing what we assume it is doing, and that assumption has not been tested here.

wendy_avl said:

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…

No disagreement, though it depends on where somebody is starting from, and this thread has been assuming a starting point nobody stated.

wendy_avl said:

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…

This answered a question I did not know how to ask. Taking it to my next appointment.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. Start from the measurement rather than the conclusion. Almost every disagreement here turns out to be two people measuring different things and comparing the numbers anyway.

Reporting back.

Closing the loop. The answer turned out to depend on the detail I had left out of the opening post, which is a lesson about how to ask rather than about the subject.