To insert a bit of sanity: from a reply by the author, she indicates that she wasn't trying to introduce a novel concept with estimating an area using right trapezoids. I don't have access to the journal, so I can't read her entire comment.
My comment wasn't, 'doctors don't know math and I'm so smart', but rather the oposite. I was surprise was when I found a doctor who didn't have a firm grasp of basic principals of statistical analysis. And how through my life I've encountered a lot of high level professionals who far exceed me in success, confess to not understanding certain concepts I considered are objectively very basic.