I recently switched away from SmartNews because it keeps getting into a mode where it 1) can’t load the stories, or 2) seems to load but just shows a black screen beyond a certain point, or 3) crashes. I hung on for awhile, hoping it would get fixed, but once I heard about the internal turmoil, I gave up.
Cats, like most animals and indeed people, exhibit a variety of personalities and behaviors. Dismissing them all as “assholes” is like stereotypng people based on race, gender, ethnicity, etc. It’s a weak argument. Combined with your “that’s not up for debate” makes me wonder if you are just trolling us.
Mine’s Aachenosaurus. It’s such an interesting (if sad) story about how science works.
From Wikipedia: Independently in 1887, the name Aachenosaurus was created by the scientist (and abbé) Gerard Smets based on fossilized fragments of material that he thought were jaw fragments from a duck-billed dinosaur (a hadrosaur). However, the fossils turned out to be petrified wood, to the great embarrassment of the discoverer.
So while he advanced science by reporting his discovery and advancing a theory about what it was, he will forever be remembered mostly for how very wrong he was.
One of the key features of scientific studies is that they only go as far as the data and the experimental design can support. Because of this it is not unusual for a study to give results that may be surprising or counterintuitive, but not be able to explain why. This is especially true for complex issues. I’m not trying to dismiss your question, and I think several good ideas and observations have been made in the ensuing comments, but in the end I don’t think this study which describes the correlation between two factors, can give you the answer you are looking for.