The reporter doesn't make any claims like that. The word "prove" or "proof" don't appear at all. Instead they say, "The findings do not support the learning styles concept," and "Student grade performance was not correlated in any meaningful way with their dominant learning style or with any learning style(s) they scored highly on."

If there's a complaint to be had here, it's that the HN poster changed the word "did" to "do" in the headline while posting here.

> “Another nail in the coffin for learning styles” – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style

> By Christian Jarrett

> The idea that we learn better when taught via our preferred modality or “learning style” – such as visually, orally, or by doing – is not supported by evidence.

Specifically, x is "when taught via our preferred modality", and y is "we learn better". The first sentence of the article gets it right, but the headline is where the false leap of logic occurs. Perhaps the headline-writer is a different person to the article-writer.

Edit: As pointed out by sirclueless, the headline was further distorted by empath75 when posted on HN.

It's hard to justify funding if "all you're doing" is in/validating or peer-reviewing work so it gets repackaged at a breakthrough =(