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

DataDave said:

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

Pushing back on DataDave here. 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.

DataDave said:

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

That holds where the measurement is reliable. Where it is noisy — and a lot of what gets tracked here is noisy — the same reasoning produces confident nonsense.

DataDave said:

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

Bookmarking. The distinction being drawn above is the one nobody else makes.

Moderator note: the sourcing question belongs in the vendor section and has been split out. No action needed from anybody.