So, I think I've... not really 'unlocked an achievement', I guess, but hit a milestone of some sort: my first mockery in an academic publication. From the PhD thesis "Effectiveness of n-back cognitive training: quantitative and qualitative aspects", Vladimír Marček ("polar") 2014:

Now, considering this lack of clarity about IQ itself, how can the public make sense of improving IQ studies? Even more so, when research on the topic is considered a “swamp” even by experts in the field? The simple answer is it can’t. As a layman in psychology, hopefully you can tolerate the feeling of not knowing or acknowledging that we do not have enough evidence and wait and learn on the go. If you can’t tolerate the unknown you’ll probably pick your favorite study and fall prey to biased media coverage, or your friendly neighborhood intellectual, who has all the knowledge, intelligence, and especially confidence and time to argue about his opinions.

This happened repeatedly in the “Dual N-back, Brain Training & Intelligence” discussion group during my participant observation. This group, according to its owner Paul Hoskinson, has around 2500 members, from which 900 subscribed to the regular newsletter. There happened to be members who made up their minds about n-back very early on, ignored or belittled studies with contradictory evidence, loathed their authors and even systematically served their pseudo-neutral reviews to new members (ironically, these texts never went on to become “just another deficient, single peer-reviewed article”).

Fortunately, very few individuals behaved in such an extreme way. Eventually it seemed that this compulsive negativistic writing manifested itself in a negative narrow-mindedness of the group, and lowered the motivation of new members to give n-back a serious try. 3 Sometimes, there even seemed to be a relationship to PSSI personality traits.

(If you've been subscribed to the DNB ML, it's pretty clear only one poster fits Marček's description; the 'neutral reviews' would be my FAQ and in particular my meta-analysis - he pointedly cites the pro-passive-control meta-analyses, even Au which was very recent, and ignores my and other meta-analyses, even Melby-Lervåg & Hulme's. What amuses me the most is that our main clash was over whether n-back gains were due primarily to passive control groups, and here polar did a large experiment with an active control group and found... no gains. Whups.)