If each of us was aware of all the personal experiences of other people here on the site, then maybe we could make more qualified statements. I for one, don't k

If each of us was aware of all the personal experiences of other people here on the site, then maybe we could make more qualified statements. I for one, don't know any of the rest of you in person, so all I can offer are my experiences. If enough people offer personal experiences, the reader should be able to extract his own pattern from them (that is, after all, what we humans are good at). Just because we are offering raw data (in the form of personal experience) instead of analyzed data (in the form of qualified statements), doesn't make the data any less true (but probably a bit less insightful). I agree that one person's experience doesn't disprove another persons research about the overall pattern, but nor is the experience completely useless.