labquiet_amy said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

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.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

labquiet_amy said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

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.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. 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.

julia.endo said:

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

Same pattern here, and in the same order.

julia.endo said:

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

Coming at julia.endo’s question from a different direction. 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.

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