Well thirty years ago I taught stat and studied it fairly extensively. No study would be considered valid with such a small sample. There is simply too much chance that you would not have a random selection with such a small sample.
The test for filing levels is not the same kind of thing.
I am not saying the conclusion is wrong just that it is not based upon a sufficiently large sample.
They did, however, show a surge of activity in the reward centre of the brain - the nucleus accumbens.
Isn't this like getting 16 women with a negative response out of 16 trials, and getting 16 men with a positive response out of 16 trials. By simple chance wouldn't the odds of that be 1 out of 231? Here's the abstract:
Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others
The neural processes underlying empathy are a subject of intense interest within the social neurosciences1, 2, 3. However, very little is known about how brain empathic responses are modulated by the affective link between individuals. We show here that empathic responses are modulated by learned preferences, a result consistent with economic models of social preferences4, 5, 6, 7. We engaged male and female volunteers in an economic game, in which two confederates played fairly or unfairly, and then measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while these same volunteers observed the confederates receiving pain. Both sexes exhibited empathy-related activation in pain-related brain areas (fronto-insular and anterior cingulate cortices) towards fair players. However, these empathy-related responses were significantly reduced in males when observing an unfair person receiving pain. This effect was accompanied by increased activation in reward-related areas, correlated with an expressed desire for revenge. We conclude that in men (at least) empathic responses are shaped by valuation of other people's social behaviour, such that they empathize with fair opponents while favouring the physical punishment of unfair opponents, a finding that echoes recent evidence for altruistic punishment.