[gentleman11]

I read part of the paper. Note the graphs where the y axis is as short as possible to make the effect size look larger. The title is explicitly non-serious. They also represent that they can measure cognitive capacity and fluid intelligence reliably and meaningfully, instead of presenting the data more clearly in the form of... data, eg, raw text scores. It also lacks the sort of control group that has a non-smartphone distraction present, so there isn't conclusive evidence that its the smartphone itself. What if it was a chessboard or a sandwich?

They need to hold themselves to more serious standards, this makes science itself look bad

[gus_massa]

In the physics lab the T.A. will yell at you if choose a scale that starts at zero instead of a scale that shows only the relevant section. When the T.A. is tired, he/she will ask another T.A. to continue the yelling. (Or sometimes just make you redo the report until you choose the correct scale.)

The research journal have a similar policy.

For some reason people in the Internet don't like it, so a solution for a blog post is to show both graphs. One that starts at zero and other with the relevant section.

[IshKebab]

Rubbish. Sometimes it is appropriate to start from zero and sometimes it isn't.

[gus_massa]

At least we can agree that using a bar graph with an axis that is not at zero is a bad idea.