This study this meme is based on is completely incorrect and should be retracted. Here’s a lay summary of its issues:
And the published article detailing the problems with that study’s issues:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513824000497
I remember reading this simply terrible article in Scientific American; the entire article was based on this research paper referred to the meme above.
The paper was a complete fraud, and people just guzzled the cool-aid. He’ll they still do, looking at this thread.
I refuted this article when it was published based on their incredibly biased and cherry picked data sources which were entirely baseless.
I wish more people were willing to apply critical thinking and analysis to such claims. All falsified claims are a setback and detriment to humankind’s comprehension of the universe.
To say it’s “completely incorrect” is an exaggeration at best. The paper you cited is far more nuanced than that.
A bit of an exaggeration, sure. But only a bit. The lay summary of the article I referenced states the following:
Venkataraman et al. find that the paper commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper: leaving out important papers, including irrelevant papers, using duplicate papers, mis-coding their societies, getting the wrong values for “big” versus “small” game, and many others.
“commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper,” and, “completely incorrect,” aren’t very different.
