It becomes quite evident in studies like this, but nearly all social science related studies are based on the exact same pattern. For instance the emotional intelligence study, which has been repeatedly cited and been reasonably influential, was based on putting people into groups, having them do tasks such as [literally] writing a shopping list, and then showing that the groups that did the tasks most efficiently were not strictly composed of those that had the highest IQ. So therefore it was implied that individual merit alone does not determine results of groups, but rather some 'emotional intelligence' does.

It's absolutely atrocious logic since B is in no way implied from A. For instance to show this then you would need to, at the minimum, put the people that all individually do the best at e.g. writing a shopping list, into a group, and then compare them against people that individually do worse but score well on the [again literally] 'Reading the Eyes in the Mind' test that was used to measure 'emotional intelligence'. Of course that was not done, and I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate because we know what the result would be - and that's not publishable. Yet bad science paired with an astounding headline and you are suddenly good to go.

Yeah, a bit of a rant but it's incredibly disappointing how awful the social sciences have become. And that decline pairs ironically with a massive increase in the reporting of their results, which become ever more grand and increasingly clickbaity, in the media.