You're conflating the "hard" sciences (which rely on reproducible experiments to explore natural laws) with the "soft" sciences (which rely on studies to explor

You're conflating the "hard" sciences (which rely on reproducible experiments to explore natural laws) with the "soft" sciences (which rely on studies to explore human behavior). The track record of the latter is significantly worse than that of the former. Software engineering, and by extension this study, falls firmly into the soft sciences territory. You should be a lot more sceptical of supposed facts in soft sciences than in hard sciences. Not because of prejudice or arrogance, but because it's much harder to be reasonably certain about anything in a soft science than in a hard science.