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Comment by vanderZwan | Hacker News Reader

> Many factors, like light scattering and imperfections in the eye’s optics, keep light from coming into sharp focus on the retina, Buabeng said.

> The study also found that iris pigmentation influenced how far apart the two light points needed to be before viewers could distinguish them as separate points. Using a standardized iris color chart, researchers classified each participant’s eye color before analyzing the results. Participants with lighter-colored irises, particularly blue eyes, experienced greater light scatter than those with darker brown irises.

Sounds like the research took a next step beyond previous studies on the same subject. You know, basically how science is supposed to work. Something anyone giving a flippant reply here could have figured out if they actually had read the article.

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Nope; here is 2013 research about it:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22527312/

And 1991:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004269...

It has to do with stray light diffusing much more easily through unpigmented irises than pigmented.

And did those studies use the same methods as this one? Because this makes it look like they didn't:

> Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, which is a subgroup analysis of a large prospective trial about visual impairments in European car drivers, we included 853 persons between 20 and 80 years of age and without a history of ocular surgery or any eye disease including cataract. Subjects participated in an ophthalmological examination, grading of lens opacity, and the measurement of visual functions such as IOSL, CS, and BCVA. Dependent on iris color, participants were divided into four groups: light-blue, blue-grey, green-hazel, and brown.

> The straylight function of the human eye depends on eye color, especially at larger angles of scattering. As a potential cause for this dependence, transmission of light through the ocular wall was measured, using a psychophysical method.

Even if this paper turns out to be the "boring" science kind that refines earlier results with different methods, it would still be science.

And the most underappreciated kind of science.

There have been estimates that up to 80% of published medical and psychology results arrive at incorrect conclusions due to methodological flaws, analysis flaws, and type I errors. And peer review's ability to weed out these problems is vastly overestimated by the public. 100% of the perhaps 80% of published papers that are incorrect made it past peer review.

So replicating and refining earlier results with different methods are really the best tool we have to ensure that science keeps progressing in a truthward direction.

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