kate.chem said:

Keep the original post as written when you update it, and add the correction underneath.

Thank you — that is the clearest version of this I have read, and I have read a lot of them.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then measure again under the same conditions.

roxy_nash said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so out loud.

roxy_nash said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. The mechanism and the magnitude are separate questions. Agreeing that something happens says nothing about whether it happens enough to act on.

I would rather be corrected than agreed with, if it comes to it.

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

Update: the thing I was blaming turned out not to be the cause. Leaving the original post as written rather than editing it, so the mistake stays visible for whoever searches this next.