I think the best takeaway from this is that the software industry makes lots of claims about development processes, but so little actual research is done in trying to validate those processes. It's all mostly based on opinion.
It's hard to do objective research. Some studies try A/B tests on student volunteers. But then this setting is clearly different to professional teams working on a project for a long time.
The value of new methodologies, languages, and techniques is partly that the enthusiastic proponents of them are given a chance to prove out that there is value, and so become motivated to go the extra distance to achieve the project specific outcome.
This value is destroyed if people are forced to use the technique, instead of championing its introduction. So measurement is made even harder!
That’s the interesting take for me, too: we love to talk about it as engineering or science but there’s a fairly good argument that this is more aspirational than real in many cases.
I reckon the same general phenomenon extends to most any human endeavor on the planet at the macro and micro level (and everything in between), and hardly anyone even notices they are doing it unless someone happens to point it out, which typically (in my experiences) then results in some form of rationalization. It's like (or actually is) humanity is living in a fantasy world at all times, but we're unable to realize it, or even consider it.
