I experienced how poorly statistics is taught in American Universities. I took the entry class twice, and never felt I understood. Perhaps that is my point, I knew I needed to understand statistics to do any serious work I was interested. I ended up taking a full summer, 12 credit hour, 5 hours a day, 8 week Seminar to gain the level of understanding I knew would be required to make a mark. Statistics is not hard, nor difficult, in the least. It is taught with utter disrespect in the US University system, with a "you don't need to understand" attitude that is 100% backwards.
Even so, bsenftner, has shown that many people in a field that uses statistics don't understand some of the very basics in their field. Implicit in that, many other research papers in that field are likely to be just as flawed as the one discussed in this article.
