And we know there’s a recent brouhaha over lack of replication in some huge number of psych studies that so many came to assume were definitive over several decades. I don’t have a link to that at my fingertips, but it can be found.
With many academic studies, the point isn’t always to provide “the” answer. It really is to add to the conversation, to use that snapshot to further explore the issues or add an angle, not to stop there. Espenshade is a good example- CC loves to quote some things as gospel that he, himself, says are far too premature conclusions.
When the study quoted in NYT came out, there was discussion on CC. Many who were familiar with that, or with how groups are selected for testing, or how some countries are far less diverse/polarized than the US, etc, pointed out how the US pool of testees may differ from those in other countries. What you want to do is not link the NYT summary, but the actual source. http://skills.oecd.org/documents/SkillsOutlook_2013_KeyFindings.pdf