Thanks, Mike, for your thoughts. I fully agree with your statement that most people are persuaded by whatever aligns with their pre-existing beliefs. As Richard Lewis commented, "It is easier to fool somebody, than to convince him that he has been fooled". This happens on virtually all internet platforms, I believe. Though my impression is that Medium might be a little less affected by this phenomenon than Quora, YouTube, TikTok or X. But I can't support that impression with quantitative evidence.

The statistical issues mostly reside with the authors of the original papers. That's why I like to dig into the methods sections of papers, which makes analyzing them and writing about them far more time-consuming than the casual reader imagines. It's what always annoys me with those health and wellness writers who simply parrot the results of a study without even considering whether the statistics that lead to the authors' conclusion are the appropriate ones in the first place.