EndoResFellow 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…

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Reporting back with a partial result, because a partial result is still better than silence. Two of the three things suggested helped; I cannot separate them and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Following on from EndoResFellow — and this may be the naive question:

What would you measure differently if you were starting again?

TrialTracker_MD said:

Reporting back with a partial result, because a partial result is still better than silence.

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.

Worth separating that from the trial evidence, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

TrialTracker_MD said:

Reporting back with a partial result, because a partial result is still better than silence.

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.