FDA_TrackerJim said:

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

That is right, and it stops being right at the edges. The general case is well behaved; the interesting cases in this thread are all at the boundary where the general case breaks.

FDA_TrackerJim 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.

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

lisa_labSD said:

The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either.

Second this. The detail I would add is minor and it is already implied above.

lisa_labSD said:

The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Most of what circulates confidently in this community traces back to one summary of one study, and the qualifier was dropped somewhere in the third retelling.