> How do papers like this get published? This is a conference paper at best.

The why is obvious: It's #1 on Hacker News right now, and spreading like a wildfire across my social media. People love to hear about promising new depression treatments, because we all know someone who suffers from depression.

Strangely, most rTMS papers follow similar patterns: No control groups, small sample sizes, questionable methodology.

The methodological issues would have been trivially easy to correct from the start, so I assume the omission of control groups is intentional. I think it's geared toward generating publicity and drumming up grant money. The core rTMS technique seems to do something for depression, so it would be great if someone could translate that into a practical, sustainable treatment.

Treating `depression` or claiming to have cured depression is something a lot of people look forward to. Couple that with the fact that we are all sitting in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, news stories with catchy titles like these are bound to attract extra eyeballs.

It’s a feasibility study. As the paper says, since the results are so promising, they are following up with a more statistically rigorous (I.e. expensive) study. I think it’s great to communicate ongoing developments and promising research tracks to other scientists. That’s completely different from sensationalized media reports, which is the real problem here.