emma_london said:The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either.
True, and it depends on a baseline nobody has stated. Without knowing where someone started, the same number can be an excellent result or a disappointing one.
Found this through search years later and it is still the best discussion of the question, so adding one thing. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.
Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.
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.
Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.
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Shop Reference StandardsDr.LeslieOBGYN said:It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.
This is my experience too, for whatever a second data point is worth.
Dr.LeslieOBGYN said:It is worth asking what the claim would look like if it were false.
There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.
Happy to go further on any of that.