There's no study that's good enough for HN.

I don't think I've ever seen a science or research article posted here that didn't immediately get picked apart for this or that in the comment section. The methodology is flawed. The data is flawed. The conclusions cannot be drawn. There are confounding variables not accounted for. The sources are questionable. It's become a trope at this point. Either our commenters' standards are way too high, or all of science reporting is deeply flawed.

It makes much more sense if you think of these threads as nerdsniping to support a preconcieved personal biases and addictions. Not very related to finding the truth.

And on top of that, I expect most of the complaints about all these studies are made by people who have never designed or run a study or research program of any kind in their entire life.

It's that common phenomenon where people think they can use general logic (which they generally are good at) to draw strong conclusions about something that isn't in their wheelhouse. I'm certainly guilty of it myself, sometimes.

Maybe most studies actually are junk.

No study is perfect – research is and has always been expensive, and playing devil's advocate while seeing the arc of promising research is one of the fundamental skills of reading and doing research.

Why not both? :)

No study should be good enough for HN. If a single non-obviously-flawed study is enough to convince you to something, then you can be convinced of anything and everything under the sun.

One study can find any effect it's looking for.

A study shouldn't move consensus. A study finding an effect is a signal that more studies should be done.

Once they are done, and people who know their stuff pour through them and reach some consensus is the sort of bar that needs to be crossed for a reasonable non-expert to 'follow the science'.

And sometimes those experts get it wrong, and accepting that degree of uncertainty is part of it.