> you can see that the point was not Flat UI is bad, but rather Flat UI done bad can strongly hinder UX.

Yes! You're absolutely correct, and that was ultimately the point I was trying to make, if poorly.

My comment was more of a response to this post's title and a handful of particularly torch-and-pitchfork comments.

Right, they aren't "nobodies", they are a shop with a long history of creating biased experiments to validate their initial assumptions. There's a LOT of material available on the net regarding their "methods", a simple google search will do.

First, I'm pretty sure that's ad hominem.

Second, I said that it's probably ok that they chose the sites to validate their claims, saying they do that often isn't a counter argument.

Third, twisting my word so blatantly makes you look childish.

No, it's not ad hominem. It's me expressing my dislike of the Nielsen Norman Group. They have contributed to the state of the art but they also tend to overblow their claims - famously they said "people don't read on the internet" which is absurd, a slew of more serious research on the subject shows how reading and scanning patterns are not substantially different on screen or in the press, and that users on the internet tend to read MORE than people reading newspapers.

Not to mention the fact that we're interacting in a text only site...

Third, what I've done is not "twisting your words" but connecting to your reply using it as a jump off point. I don't remember the name of that rhetorical figure but it's pretty common.

All in all I don't think there's anything you should be taking personally unless you have some vested interest in the author of the article (haven't checked, are you the author?)