I have to say, no matter how much of a hassle it can be to read every homework article, textbook chapter, and student essay in my “free” time, they generally yield some valuable information both implicit and explicit that will help me with the task at hand, regardless of the course. With that in mind, this article was one of the most obnoxious for a couple reasons.

First, the layout is completely misleading. Barring any content, the title in itself identifies what I can only assume is supposed to be a wittily humorous paradox. I understand the intent is to poke fun. That’s the goal of any joke, but I have complete confidence that no one laughed at this one. It is so ridiculous in its implications that I doubt it worked as effective clickbait either. By implications I mean that it undermines all of its credibility before it starts any discussion. If you want to throw out a statement like “studies are bogus,” don’t reveal your source to be… a study!

Haha, it’s funny because they probably didn’t actually do a study, right? Yeah, but that’s not funny; that’s kind of stupid. Why would anyone conduct a study on the incredibility of studies and expect their study to be credible? Talk about the faulty procedure. Talk about the unrepresentative samples. Talk about bias. That’s what the rest of the article is about, so why not hint at that in the title instead of making a bad joke?

Good, legitimate science is under enough scrutiny because of the pseudoscience described in the article; let’s not lump it all together. (Sorry if it seems like I am overreacting. I recognize this is an innocent attempt at light humor, but the situation seems heavier than the author gives credit.)

Second, the abstract does not offer the expected list of conclusions from the study. Even if we accept the article isn’t a study in a strict sense, the abstract still doesn’t address conclusions. It gives a couple quotes. For what? Interest? Ethos? If this is an editorial, we want opinion. If this is mock science, we need fact. If this is satire, why so serious? The thoughts in the abstract don’t need to be well-defined yet, but they should definitely connect to the title and give the broad idea of what you (the author) found from your research and observations. This is more of what degrades scientific credibility.

I guess the rest is alright…