These comments are always so hilarious. It demonstrates a significant lack of understand of how statistics actually works. You see this on reddit all the time, you'd think it'd be better here.

Power and sample size are determined by numerous factors depending on the question under study. You could have N=10 be statistically powerful and N=1,000,000 be statistically meaningless. It depends ENTIRELY on the subject under study. More is not always better and in many cases completely unnecessary.

https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/BS/BS704_Power/B...

Here is a decent guide. You may wish to read it so you can learn when you can dismiss a study based on N. You never mentioned, did you back out the study numbers and determine the N=17 number was outside the range of statistical power? If so, would you mind posting your calculations?