BiostatsBrad said:

The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the…

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. Pushing back on the consensus forming here. Consistency is not the same as correctness, and a board that agrees with itself quickly is usually agreeing with the first person who sounded certain.

BiostatsBrad said:

The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the…

That is right, and it stops being right at the edges. The general case is well behaved; the interesting cases in this thread are all at the boundary where the general case breaks.

BiostatsBrad said:

The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the…

This answered a question I did not know how to ask. I will report back once I have actually tried it.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. If two explanations both fit, the useful question is which one predicts something the other does not. That is answerable; arguing about which sounds more plausible is not.

TrialTracker_MD said:

If two explanations both fit, the useful question is which one predicts something the other does not.

Mine went the same way, slower.