How the vendor documentation pages are maintained, and by whom — what changed since posts 91–105

Two things can be true about vendor documentation pages at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.

Multiple services on one lot: agreement across two independent laboratories is stronger than a high number from one. Our vendor pages deliberately mix services for that reason.

It is one reading of the data and not the only reasonable one.

Vendor documentation pages is one of those subjects where the general answer and the answer for a specific case diverge, and the thread will go in circles until someone says which one is being asked for.

Confirming post #91 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

Practical note on vendor documentation pages: write down what you expect before you look. The number of times I have found what I went looking for is higher than chance would allow.

Following, with nothing to contribute beyond having asked the same thing elsewhere.

Reports of ordinary results are more valuable than reports of remarkable ones, precisely because only the remarkable ones get posted elsewhere.

Written from notes rather than memory, which is why the numbers are specific.

Where I part company with post #96, and it is a narrow parting.

A request rather than an answer: could whoever has the primary source for vendor documentation pages post it? I have seen the claim three times this month and each version had lost a qualifier.

Post #96 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.

Speaking only to vendor documentation pages as I have actually seen it, rather than as it is usually described: the effect is real, it is smaller than the thread suggests, and the variance between people is larger than the effect.

Do not adjust a reported figure. Post what the laboratory said and put your interpretation in a separate sentence.

The arithmetic in post #99 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.

The useful distinction on vendor documentation pages is between what was measured and what was inferred from it. Both end up in the same sentence and only one of them has error bars.

The practical version of vendor documentation pages is three sentences long. The rigorous version is three pages and reaches the same conclusion with the conditions attached.

I read post #99 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.

Where I would push back on the vendor documentation pages consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.

The service matters to the interpretation. A documentation review and a chromatographic assay answer different questions and both are worth filing.

That is where I would start, not where I would stop.