The reason nobody is interested in the independent research efforts of little online community groups is that it's almost certain that they didn't put enough th

The reason nobody is interested in the independent research efforts of little online community groups is that it's almost certain that they didn't put enough thought into the statistical design of their study, and thus the results are meaningless. Generally professional academics have to submit their research proposal to a funding agency and the statistical design is examined at every stage of the process to ensure that results will have some validity - and even then, it's not unusual for preliminary studies that look promising to be overturned by later more comprehensive studies. Even with all this professional double-checking, a non-trivial amount of fraud and data manipulation takes place as academics rush to climb the bureaucratic ladder or get large corporations to buy their government-subsidized startups, often making it difficult even for experts in the field to determine what's reliable and what isn't.