[jaybaxter]

>but you’ve got to think about the idea that the folks who conducted this study know as well how hard science is, and for them to publish this anyway means they (and their reviewers) did a pretty good job dealing with this issue (and many others).

What makes you say that about this paper specifically? Certainly in general there are career incentives for authors to publish papers which are not very conclusive, and we know that relatively useless observational studies do get published.