The article makes a very clear case against this notion that it's a personal opinion. The problem is while you might like it, you also don't have a continuing objective measure of your own costs of working in an open office plan. For example, are you measuring your epinephrine levels?

As one of the developers who has a interruption surplus (get interrupted more than I interrupt others), I really dislike open offices, they actively prevent me from getting work done.

Not my epinephrine levels no, but RescueTime does let you know when you're working more productively than others I guess.

The horror stories here seem to be giant rooms full of inconsiderate loud frat boys.

My current office is 8-10 people, open plan, great inter-team communication, and a pleasant atmosphere....

The whole point of the article is that the differences are empirically and objectively measurable on a wide variety of axes, and almost universally against the open office. It is not a question of personal preference.

That is, there actually is a "right" answer that is the same for everyone. Measuring it is "science."

No, there really isn't a right answer. It may be that it decreases productivity and increases stress, but if it increases employee happiness (regardless of stress), that's a tradeoff that can be made. And the article definitely is less solid on happiness--it appears to vary. I'd certainly never, ever want to go back to an office, regardless of the toll an open plan may take on my productivity.

It's not about goal choice at all. "Productivity versus happiness" is not the issue.

The specific goal can vary and doesn't matter to the question of whether there is a "right answer." For any arbitrary goal, yes, there is actually a "right" objective answer on the question of what factors, if any, influence in general the ability to achieve that goal.

Incidentally, the article deals extensively with employee happiness in the form of "job dissatisfaction," which suffers (like almost all other metrics) in open plan offices.

It's often not the team who decides. I've also been told (but it's just hearsay) that you can't get the highest LEED certification for your groovy new office complex if you have individual offices, so the PR value of that is factored in as well.

I'd really like to see a citation on that.