To allay my concerns I would have also liked to see a discussion about what kind of bias is introduced by the hand-picked intervals that start/end at 1998, or even better using a presentation method like running means that doesn’t rely on hand-picked intervals.
That would be more shocking if the OP hadn’t specifically mentioned this:
To allay my concerns I would have also liked to see a discussion about what kind of bias is introduced by the hand-picked intervals that start/end at 1998, or even better using a presentation method like running means that doesn’t rely on hand-picked intervals.