lisa_labSD said:

Keep the original post as written when you update it, and add the correction underneath.

Saving this. It is the first explanation that did not require me to already understand it. I will report back once I have actually tried it.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. 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 correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

CarlaRPh_TPA 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…

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

CarlaRPh_TPA 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…

Coming at CarlaRPh_TPA’s question from a different direction. 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.

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

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a trend.