My vendor just disappeared - took my money and ghosted — need advice

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. 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.

Dr.NateNeph said:

The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the…

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. If two explanations both fit, the useful question is which one predicts something the other does not. That is answerable; arguing about which sounds more plausible is not.

One concrete data point for the thread. If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way. Most of the apparent contradictions in these threads dissolve at that step.

Following on from Dr.NateNeph — and this may be the naive question:

How would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

Moderator note: two posts asking for a source have been merged into one. Please search the thread before asking again.