In this case at least, it's not the Times' research that is 'low quality'.
[0] I copied and pasted the credentialed people quoted in the article below; I only made it 80% of the way through and then realized it had become absurd:
Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Center for Health Research in Washington
Dr. Eric Donnenfeld, who was Mr. Puglisi’s surgeon and a past president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery
global medical director for a large laser eye-surgery provider
Researchers at Ohio State University
one surgeon’s 2017 analysis of more recent data
Morris Waxler, a retired senior F.D.A. official ... [and] former chief of the diagnostic and surgical devices branch in the F.D.A.’s division of ophthalmic devices
Dr. Cynthia MacKay [ophthalmologist]
Dr. John Vukich, chair of the American Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery’s refractive clinical surgery committee
Dr. Malvina Eydelman, director of the division of ophthalmic and ear, nose and throat devices at the F.D.A.’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health
Dr. Anat Galor, an associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami.
Dr. Pedram Hamrah, director of research at the New England Eye Center at Tufts Medical Center