⚠ Fake COAs — March 2026

Dr.EM_Chicago 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. 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.

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

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.

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

How long did you give it before you decided it was working?

Dr.CardioMD said:

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.

Pushing back on Dr.CardioMD here. The counter-case has not been addressed. Somebody upthread described the situation that does not fit, and the thread moved on rather than engaging with it, which is the failure mode this board is supposed to avoid.

Dr.CardioMD said:

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.

That is right, and it stops being right at the edges. The general case is well behaved; the interesting cases in this thread are all at the boundary where the general case breaks.

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