i made that point too, if he was a sociologist or even psychologist then i would have given it more credence
the point of evidence based research that i made stands, academics do not have to be the brightest, but they need to prove that it is evident based and peer reviewed. otherwise it is baseless nonsense
whilst being true to a point, evidence based research is vital for society whether that being in health or other areas.
the author of the research would know that reputational damage can happen and i suggest that may have been his aim seeing as though his evidence was based on posts on a football forum. as somebody who is heavily involved in research i find there "findings" laughable and frankly quite ridiculous.
to be fair it is possibly a quite legitimate research question, however it looks like to me that they had already decided the findings before the research was done and all they did was back up their assumptions.
how shit gets on your shoes is a legitimate research question, one that could provide some quite fascinating results.