Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[FlatAssembler]

A terrible study is still better than a-priori reasoning, and a-priori reasoning is better than intuition.

A terrible study proves nothing -- except perhaps that the author is a sloppy investigator or bad at designing experiments. It is just as useless as intuition, so neither should be taken as gospel. At that point we should design and execute a well-designed study.

I suspect that on this topic, the public opinions have hardened so much that no researcher will get a straight answer.

Oh really? Keep in mind that, to the vast majority of doctors at the time, the Semmelweis'es work seemed like a terrible study. It seemed to use bad methodology and to arrive at pseudoscientific-sounding conclusions. Levy commented both that the methodology is bad (he said: "Why wasn't a simpler and more convincing experiment performed, to simply stop all the anatomical work?") and that the conclusions are implausible (that "implausibly small" particles from a corpse can turn you into a corpse if they touch your blood, and that washing your hands with some substances solves that). So, was it the right conclusion that Semmelweis was incompetent? Of course not.