A comparison like this from any trained statistician would be treated as borderline fraud, and is akin to the "we proved cigarettes are safe to smoke" studies done in the 50-60's.

So to be clear, this is not a "flaw". This is a catastrophic, wrong from the get go, not mentioned and no effort made to control for, failure.

Deliberately misrepresenting data, or in the most charitable case, by sheer mass incompetence, when it involves the safety of people is never ok.