But, but ... they are "researchers" at a government university! They did a Study! They're going to get more funding for more Studies! They can't be questioned by the Lower Orders!
Obviously, humanity is evolving toward its optimal form, the tenured public university researcher.
I worked for a few years in the department of a hospital that oversees all of the medical research going on there. I hate to say it, but that study is pretty typical of what passes for research. I've seen the same pattern repeated so many times I could scream, both in studies done at our hospital, and in study reports I read in medical journals. They go through records and enumerate certain data that they find. Then they enter the data into a statistical program (or have the statistician analyze it). They come up with correlations between the various data sets. They go on to conclude all sorts of things about the correlations that aren't supported by even the flimsiest shred of evidence. And the study gets published.