Well this is disappointing.

I wonder if they extended the study to include Markdown would that tilt the balance somewhat. The overhead associated with LaTeX might come from the fact that there's a compile cycle to get the formatting right, although they mention Kile as an editor so that's not clear.

Markdown also has fewer features---therefore a smaller learning curve than LaTeX)---and as a frequent user of Word (and lowriter), I know I interact directly with fewer features of the wysiwyg editors, given that many features are implicit or default, whereas I must manually invoke all features that I use in a LaTeX document (those I haven't placed in a .sty file anyway).