[bildung]

The bar chart in the rebuttal is pretty damning, though - just look at the gigantic confidence intervals. The real effects can plausibly be negative for all factors but "Healthy Daily Activities".

Note that I neither defend the news media here, nor argue against news fasting. This particular study just isn't the final argument in the matter, in my opinion.

[goactualize]

The 17% reduction in depression was statistically significant. Healthy daily activities was p = 0.057. I agree it's not the be-all & end-all study, but its promising.

[bildung]

Statistical significance is almost meaningless in this case (or necessesary, but not sufficient). One can calculate the necessary sample size to guarantee stasticial significance before the study even starts.

I just calculated it for this study: With an estimated small effect size (0.1), 95% confidence (α=0,05) und 1 degree of freedom you have guaranteed significance at n=197. Phase 2 of the study at hand had n=167, so almost guaranteed significance from the sample size alone.

The problem is that the confidence intervals are huge and their range covers the negative space, too. In other words: It is quite possible that a reproduction of the study would show negative results.