Ben Goldacre is the author of "Bad Science."

I've not read this specific paper in great detail, as it's not my field. But in general, with the exception of academic papers that are plainly deranged, I’m always nervous about the idea that we should effectively censor improbable or poor quality research from the academic record. In most cases, it’s good to have all material out there, available to be read and criticized, with those critical discussions prominently and clearly linked to the original.

We are justifiably angry, for example, when studies with negative findings are effectively hidden from colleagues, simply because it’s unattractive for academics and journals to spend time publishing them. In discussions on this phenomenon of “publication bias” – which is depressingly widespread - people usually insist that everything should be published, even in imperfect form, so it is on the record somewhere for other academics to find.

We should always remember that academic papers are technical documents which are there to be read critically, and interpreted cautiously, by people who understand them, and ideally know something of the background: no single study is supposed to be a grand sweeping statement about whether a phenomena is real or not.

You may not agree with authors’ conclusions; you may think that their method of measuring something, or setting up the experiment, could have been designed better; you may feel that there is a huge prior probability of their findings being due to chance, because the claimed phenomena is so unlikely. That’s fine. The academic literature is a buyer-beware market, we should never forget that, and we should always be on guard, with everything we read.