Sorry, maybe I should have quoted the next line as well:

> Pabst echoes that advice: “My recommendation for people at home, without knowing anything they are doing, 90% chance that if you use less coffee and grind a little coarser [your coffee] will actually taste better.”

So it's not just about consistency, but also quality.

"taste better" does not mean quality either. What do I know about their tastes, they're scientists not baristas (in the article baristas were only asked about process options). Also they didn't discover anything new, just confirmed what everybody was telling them. And not at least, there are different methods of making coffee, while they smeared their espresso machine results interpretation over everything - like for instance to make Turkish coffee (aka pot) you must grind it the finest and use more.