The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a trend.

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

Was that from a primary source or from a summary of one?

lisa_labSD said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. 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.

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

Resolved, and the thing that resolved it was the least interesting suggestion in the thread. Writing that down for the next person who wants the interesting answer.

Dr.PulmRoch said:

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

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.