The article states 40% of pupils will learn to read efficiently no matter what, it is going to be hard to identify those methods that do not work for anybody. F

The article states 40% of pupils will learn to read efficiently no matter what, it is going to be hard to identify those methods that do not work for anybody. Further we have talked about local maximum in the comments here, the brain is lazy so some methods will hurt your ability to learn. On the flip side I agree that only doing phonics might be a local maximum for the group.