VendorMark said:

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…

Coming at VendorMark’s question from a different direction. Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then measure again under the same conditions.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number. A figure without its method cannot be checked, and an unchecked figure is how this community accumulates folklore.

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

Following on from VendorMark — and this may be the naive question:

Did your prescriber agree with that reading, and if not what was their objection?

BiostatsBrad said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

I am going to disagree with the direction of travel here. The thread has converged on the tidiest answer rather than the best-supported one, and those are not the same thing.

BiostatsBrad said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

True, and it depends on a baseline nobody has stated. Without knowing where someone started, the same number can be an excellent result or a disappointing one.