It depends on what one means by the "Dunning-Kruger effect." I had the same impulse that the analysis did not disprove DK, but after sitting with it for overlo

It depends on what one means by the "Dunning-Kruger effect." I had the same impulse that the analysis did not disprove DK, but after sitting with it for overlong I agree with the analysis. I think there are two competing DK effect definitions that are being conflated, one descriptive and one explanatory: 1. DK shows that less skilled people overestimate their ability, and highly skilled people underestimate it 2. DK shows that people's estimation of their ability is causally determined by their actual ability I believe you are claiming, correctly, that the article does not disprove the first definition that explains the observation, but I think the article is trying to disprove the second definition that explains why it occurs. In other words: Yes, there is an observable Dunning-Kruger effect in the sense that we're bad at self evaluation. Is that effect attributable to one's actual level of competence? The evidence for that appears to be a statistical artifact, and further experiments seem to disprove that conjecture. I'm not a statistician or a psychologist.