Now does stropping straighten or correct the imperfections caused as we believe or is it a useless practice? We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years with this

Now does stropping straighten or correct the imperfections caused as we believe or is it a useless practice? We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years with this mental model that these experiments confirm and that stropping doesn’t sharpen but merely straightens the edge. Yet one must still sharpen the edge eventually.