Unless an article compares various studies using a meta-analysis methodology (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

Unless an article compares various studies using a meta-analysis methodology (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis), I'm probably not going to give it much attention. To summarize one key problem: journalists (and even some scientists) are prone to say two studies "disagree" if one demonstrates an effect and another does not. This is a problematic style of argument, because this kind of "disagreement" may be caused by random variation in sample sizes and/or differences in thresholds. You have to dig in to make an honest comparison and synthesis. This requires some basic statistical understanding, which apparently is lacking in many educational programs (but that is another thing!). Please, if you do this kind of work or care about interpreting a set of studies collectively, go read the first few chapters from "Introduction to Meta-Analysis" by Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, and Rothstein.