I totally understand your experience. Trust me, I'm not biased towards or invested in speech therapy; if anything, I doubted the efficacy of speech therapy until I read the research. The neuroscience research is pretty clear. There are the etiological causes of stuttering that disrupt the brain's speech system; if you have a stutter, your brain can actually make your speech more dysfluent by trying to work around those issues (maladaptations). The research is also very clear that intensive speech therapy removes those maladapations and leaves your speech system with only the root causes of stuttering. (It seems to me that it's not so much that they teach you how to speak better, but re-train your brain. And to be fair, intensive speech therapy was developed before they knew the neuroscience; but still, it works.) This entire [chapter](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/pruw9f/speech_therapy_and_neuroplasticity_how_and_why/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is about the neuroscience of how/why speech therapy works. Now, you're completely right about transferring clinical fluency into the real-world. It's not enough to only do a clinical program; the studies I mention above had a good post-therapy maintenance program that helped the participants keep their fluency and transfer it to real-life situations. I read a study where the maintenance program wasn't very strong, and 2/3 of the participants regressed to their initial fluency by the six-month mark. So absolutely, fluency gained in the clinic can quickly disappear in the real world. So yes, in conclusion, I'm pretty confident that intensive speech therapy works, though people can have experiences like yours. I don't think it's speech clinics finagling the data for their own profit. I'd wager that you'd have a better experience if clinic had a good maintenance program to follow after the intensive portion. I don't say any of this to blame you, I only want to offer helpful/informed advice (as best as I can) and keep you from being overly pessimistic about improving fluency. Perfect fluency is not a good goal, but improved fluency is something worth striving for, and it will improve quality of life.