But there is a serious point to be made, of course. This study involved jumping from stationary airplanes on the ground, which negates the whole point of a parachute (and hence, the control group survived just fine). It therefore "proved" that you don't need a parachute when jumping from an airplane, on the assumption that the results extrapolate to higher altitudes.

Nonsense, of course. But then there's a lot of randomized, controlled trials out there that are just as flawed, only in ways that are non-obvious to non-physicians, or even physicians with different specialities. "Study X proved Y" is never as straightforward as it seems to the lay public.