Thank you for the detailed response. I am part of the general public, so to speak, but am also interested in this research because I have a certain disease. I a

Thank you for the detailed response. I am part of the general public, so to speak, but am also interested in this research because I have a certain disease. I am treating this disease with diet modification, which seems to be working. (The Specific Carbohydrate Diet.) However, it seems like there are many questions as to why it works that is very much not understood. > The control group better have reasonable overlap. I wonder if there is enough understanding of what makes a "healthy" gut microbiome in order to properly assess what "overlap" means. Isn't a microbiome a complex system with many moving parts? For example, a study of successful businesses could include many successful businesses that are completely different from one another. Comparing these to "unhealthy" businesses would probably not be very useful. It seems like you're answering this question by saying the different labs should process the same samples, to at least see if the same samples are returning the similar results. Is that right? I wonder if there is a resource for further learning on this topic. Reading scientific studies, as you say, provides only limited value to a layman. The number of people with diseases affected by the gut microbiome is very, very large.