jason_paloalto said:

Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look.

True, with the qualification that this is a self-selected group. The people for whom it did not work post less, and that shapes everything we think we know.

jason_paloalto said:

Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look.

Thank you — that is the clearest version of this I have read, and I have read a lot of them.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly. 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.

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

Dr.CardioMD said:

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

This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so out loud.

Dr.CardioMD said:

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

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.