I'm certainly not endorsing him, I'll use the woods I like. Beside the lack of controls and the sample size making this study scientifically weak, it comes with the most common problem: only odd or contrary information counts as "news." The science and medical reporters are particularly strapped for anything really interesting or contradictory to report, so they leap upon any study that goes against the "common-sense" doctrines. Just because of how statistics work, sooner or later you're going to come across a small sample-size study that "proves" cigarettes inhibit cancer. And being "news" because it's weird, that's the one that gets trumpeted from the rafters. And all the susequent studies that contradict it are just plain dull.
Several decades ago, there was a study done that supposedly "proved" that a prayer group could change the rate of cancer recovery of some total strangers, just by praying for them. And because people wanted it to be true so badly, it's even entered the culture as "fact." Never mind that the original study was flawed in technique, or that a few dozen further studies have disproved it, and a review of the field using a large-scale sample size shows no effect from prayer - people just like the first conclusion better.
And it's one thing to say "well stupid people are gonna act stupid" but it does cause harm, in my eyes anyway. If you engage with "news" often enough, you'll see story after story about people who had a dream idea and started up a small business and struggled and mortgaged their house and worked 110 hours a week and the inlaws mortgaged their house, and then the idea caught on, and now Buffy and Biffy are millionaires. What they don't tell you is that Boomer and Sue-Bee right up the street did the same thing, and lost their house and the in-laws lost their house and now they're all living in a motel and selling crack to schoolchildren - because 80% of small businesses fail, and the "news" reporters have to look far and wide to find the small percentage who succeed. Just so they can tell you a happy story which still fits the happy model.
