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So they were asking beginner lifters to rate how many they would have left in the tank? I've been lifting for maybe half a year and I still find it pretty hard to estimate >.<

It's good that it's studied, but it does sound that they've "conclusively" proven something, and I'm not so sure. Small sample size too, like you said.

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They are asking beginners in both the control and test arm, so it sounds like they have "proven" something (or at least given good evidence).

This is something that can be heavily skewed by the small N. If the people in both groups happen to closely match in their distributions of accuracy for this self-assessment then this would be correct. Larger N would make both groups much more likely to match the real distribution, which would in turn make them more likely to match each other.

Added to that, creatine could influence how close you feel to failure. I'd like to see some data, for participants training until failure. That would still be somewhat subjective, but i'd argue, less so.

That is clearly something that they would be finding given the design of their experiment, no?

Can you explain the stats to give me the proper N for when this experiment would be properly powered?

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