[globular-toast]

If the comment was along the lines of "I've read the paper and think it has some serious problems like x, y and z" then you'd be right.

But this is just someone who's read the title of a BBC article about the paper and basically saying "yeah but science is hard". We know it's hard. That's why we don't all have publications in peer-reviewed journals. This isn't specific to this study. You think published authors in the field don't know this?

[frognumber]

I don't think the audience for the comment was "published authors in the field" but "random people in a web forum" who make comments like yours ("Imagine telling someone you made a website and they're like 'cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?'")

In that context, it's often helpful to remind people that:

- Correlation is not causation

- It takes many replicated results to go from hypothesis to theory

(Which is quite different from "science is hard"). This is doubly-true with the current level of hype and grandstanding in science where primary and secondary sources are often clickbaity and misleading.