Dr.CardioMD said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. If you are going to change something, change one thing and give it long enough to express itself. Four weeks is the usual minimum for anything pharmacological on this board, and two weeks of data has told you almost nothing.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What would you measure differently if you were starting again?

BethLabQueen said:

If you are going to change something, change one thing and give it long enough to express itself.

Pushing back on BethLabQueen here. This treats a plausible mechanism as a demonstrated one. Plausible is where you start looking, not where you stop.

BethLabQueen said:

If you are going to change something, change one thing and give it long enough to express itself.

Agreed, and the size of the effect matters as much as its existence. Something real and small gets treated here as though it were real and decisive.