I think the paper is a satire on "evidence-based medicine" - a framework which insists upon randomized controlled trials as the primary basis for medical decisions.

Notably this is exactly such a trial, while also absolutely irrelevant to the question of needing a parachute or not (the trial planes were all on the ground at the time of the jumps).

It's a follow-up to a previous satire, which questioned whether or not we need RCTs for time-tested, common-sense interventions. The original paper suggested that the most die-hard EBM fans organize and participate in a RCT of the parachute. Several years later, tongue planted firmly in cheek, they did.

https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2019/02/breakthrough-resea...

funny enough I actually use this article and others in a project when I teach stats.

This article is part of what is known as the 'BMJ Christmas Edition' which gone on for quite a while[0]. it is meant to be at the same time scientifically serious and practically silly [1]. Its...basically satire, but satire as specific scientific commentary. In this case, about the details and clarity of scientific reporting and the claims made from data.

There have been a couple notable problems...One is that satire and human don't always generalize culturally. The second problem though became much more insidious with the electronic shift in publishing. If you access a Christmas edition article electronically, nothing clearly indicates that anything is different about these articles. Nothing indicates 'Christmas edition'. Nothing indicates that they are meant to be light hearted scientific commentary. So they get cited...both as satire and as not satire. Either for cultural reasons or because people aren't being rigorous.

[0] https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-type...

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/13/bmj-christmas-issue-stud...

Probably for readers to learn about critical thinking.