Because the "just before" is referring to the overall trend, not the single month before the Snowden leaks. The actual highest single month view count is found

Because the "just before" is referring to the overall trend, not the single month before the Snowden leaks. The actual highest single month view count is found in November 2012 with around 4 million views. The months around the Boston Bombing are not outliers. November 2012, as well as July 2014, are outliers. Eliminating these outliers from the analysis strengthens the case for the existence of a chilling effect. See pages 28-39 of the paper [0] for their methodology and findings. If I'm being unduly short it is because the sort of low-effort skepticism [1] that you offered is all too common with any article involving a statistical analysis. [0] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645 [1] "Did the researchers account for {{obvious factor}}?" Yes, they did. Check before commenting.