That paragraph you quoted doesn't sound smart to me. It seems like it's argues against a strawman. Scientists who studies issues like this usually don't publish raw correlations but try to control for various factors they can think of.
Of course you can still criticise that scientists failed to control for relevant factors but that means you actually have to read the papers.
You can also make general arguments against the usefulness of regression analysis but Scott doesn't make those in that article.
I think Scott doesn't argue against scientific papers in particular or in general. I think he is raising the sanity waterline. Increase the awareness for these things in general. The specialized scientists may be aware of thse - and probably joke about them. But I was surprised a bit. I could have come up with that - but I didn't. Did you?
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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