They claim "methodological concerns". After all, if the study was done improperly, any conclusions it draws would be misleading. In this case the methodology i

They claim "methodological concerns". After all, if the study was done improperly, any conclusions it draws would be misleading. In this case the methodology involved looking at hospital patients. That's a skewed sample, and the results don't necessarily apply more generally. It doesn't account for (among other things) people who got sick at levels that didn't require a hospital visit. It's also a routine way to do things. Epidemiologists understand what it means and what it doesn't. And even without an exact understanding, the conclusions people will draw from it also happen to be valid. They're hypothesizing some unknown skew factor, without being able to name it. Any scientist knows that you can't actually account for every conceivable variable, and holding science up to that standard would be impossible. And when its done exclusively when you don't like the results, that's clearly an excuse masquerading as a methodological concern.