Yeah, the study by Sackman, Erikson, and Grant is exactly the study that originated the concept, and it's the first one listed in Steve McConnell's survey, which I link to in the post.
And of course he didn't just point to the study, he just used the study to back up what he and many others knew. He also proposed a solution to the problem, the "surgical team", to get out of the idiotic situation of promoting the best programmers to no longer do programming.