Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. 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.

Dr.SleepRoch said:

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

Same experience, arrived at from the opposite direction. Nothing to add that would improve it.

Dr.SleepRoch said:

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

Coming at Dr.SleepRoch’s question from a different direction. 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.

One concrete data point for the thread. 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.

Happy to go further on any of that.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.