james_edin said:It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any.
There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. The trials generally allowed a step to be held or reduced and then retried, and people who did that mostly arrived at the same place a few weeks later. The end point of the ladder is set by tolerability, not by a schedule, and there is no evidence that reaching the top faster produces a better outcome.