Could someone link to original article? Didn’t see in post. Notice that they don’t cite what the authors’ computed R^2 was but conjectured it was low (and I agr

Could someone link to original article? Didn’t see in post. Notice that they don’t cite what the authors’ computed R^2 was but conjectured it was low (and I agree that it is likely low). Thus, doesn’t appear to be a case of blind p-hacking off the bat. Could just be really bad. However could be that: - The conclusion of the paper was that no relationship exists. - Later specifications include covariates. For example, including travel flows here could help to disentangle cultural mores regarding drinking and probability that ANY virus was transmitted to place. - some sort of weighting was done. Although in that case I would expect to see a steeper slope to account for New York. Usual practice here would be to display the univariate relationship with circles that are sized to match weights. - Graphs like this can play tricks on your eyes. There might be a lot of dots clustered along the fit line that are overlapping etc.