Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any. If nothing would, the discussion is not about evidence, and it is better to say so early than to spend nine posts discovering it.

Dr.AddMedPHL said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

That reframing is the part I needed.

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.

roxy_nash 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. Posting only so the count is not one.

Moderator note: good thread. Keeping it here rather than moving it, because the question is general enough to be useful.