PedsEndoPhilly said:

Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it.

Coming at PedsEndoPhilly’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.

Reporting back.

Update, and it is the boring outcome: nothing was wrong. The measurement I was reading had moved less than its own week-to-week variation, which somebody said upthread and I did not believe.

One thing that is still open after PedsEndoPhilly’s answer:

How would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

Dr.PulmRoch said:

Update, and it is the boring outcome: nothing was wrong.

Worth saying that the confident version of this is more useful to the person writing it than to the person reading it.

Dr.PulmRoch said:

Update, and it is the boring outcome: nothing was wrong.

Agreed, and the size of the effect matters as much as its existence. Something real and small gets treated here as though it were real and decisive.