Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the Atlantic, not a psychology journal, so the expected audience and writing style are going to be different. Coding Horror is usually pretty short on depth and detail, too. Articles like this are a good way to hear about studies you want to read about further. I don't have time to keep current on neurology, linguistics, psychology, history, archaeology, epidemiology, etc., etc., etc. journals, and I highly doub…
Yes, the "all writing must be clinical and concise" comments are one of those absurd nerd memes that I wish would die. The Atlantic is not the primary literature, and you can't impugn an entire research program based on a pop-science summary written for mass consumption. If I could teach nerds only one thing about the world, it's that dismissing non-technical forms of communication as useless does not impress anyone…
But there's a few simple things article writers can do to improve readability. -Summaries (explain what the reader can expect to get out of the article) -Sideboxes (highlight key passages or points from each paragraph) -Descriptive paragraph headings
This article had none of those, and I felt like it was just trying to keep me hooked so I'd keep clicking to get to the next page and find the good part.