Dr.RaviCardio said:

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

That holds where the measurement is reliable. Where it is noisy — and a lot of what gets tracked here is noisy — the same reasoning produces confident nonsense.

Dr.RaviCardio 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 it to my notes with a link back to this thread.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly. It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false. If nothing would look different, it is not a claim about the world and no amount of discussion will settle it.

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

ingrid_STO said:

It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.

Second this. Posting only so the count is not one.

ingrid_STO said:

It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.

Coming at ingrid_STO’s question from a different direction. Take it one variable at a time. Almost every unanswerable question in these threads is unanswerable because three things changed in the same fortnight, and no amount of subsequent argument can untangle them after the fact.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.