Because academics and primary consumers of these studies understand their uses and limitations. Not all science has to be groundbreaking new discoveries, simply

Because academics and primary consumers of these studies understand their uses and limitations. Not all science has to be groundbreaking new discoveries, simply trying to replicate an existing study or exact same methodology on different cohort is perfectly fine. The problem is when it gets printed in mainstream press who sensationalize and then posted to reddit/hn where people go 'duh this is obvious, this is a dumb thing to study', 'sample too small', 'not controlling for income/confounding'.