Andy Kessler writes, "Hands down, the two most dangerous words in the English language today are 'studies show.' I totally agree.
Kessler goes on:
Many of the studies quoted in newspaper articles and pop-psychology books are one-offs anyway. In August 2015, the Center for Open Science published a study in which 270 researchers spent four years trying to reproduce 100 leading psychology experiments. They successfully replicated only 39. Yes, I see the irony of a study debunking a study, but add to this a Nature survey of 1,576 scientists published last year. 'More than 70% of reserachers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments,' the survey report concludes. "And more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments."
More: "It's easy to write this off as trivial, except millions take these studies and their conclusions seriously."
I like Kessler's conclusions: "These studies show whatever someone wants them to. So stay skeptical ..." Yes!