> This is why I find empirical studies so valuable: in many cases "X" and "not X" are equally easy to rationalize, so we need evidence to help us decide which t

> This is why I find empirical studies so valuable: in many cases "X" and "not X" are equally easy to rationalize, so we need evidence to help us decide which to believe. I agree with the author here, but I also see some cause for alarm. When we could see it going either way, maybe it really could. As in, the result was a coincidence. Or maybe not exactly a coincidence, but caused by some very specific details. This investigation was on java code, but will the same hold for haskell code? Closed source code? Will it be true 20 years from now? Maybe... but I also wouldn't take the answer for granted. And, most insidious of all, maybe we as a community will look at this and decide it's a problem to be solved, and succeed in solving it.