I don't disagree with you, but this is a horribly sad comment. I worry that the text of papers often gives short shrift to nuance and subtlety that is necessary for reasonable interpretation.
It was almost as if many of the authors couldn't do the kind of math expected of high schoolers that apply to university to study science.
My takeaway was 1) to deeply distrust doctors as scientists (and as people who could think) and 2) mostly ignore the text surrounding the tables and graphs and just go straight to the data.