You’re not wrong, but this is a press release from a university about research. They’re not going to dig into methodology when they want to toot their own horn.

Reading the abstract and introduction (full article is pay walled), it was a pilot study using EEG. Normally similar studies have participants self report using a survey. Sample size was 60 people which seems reasonable given they had to hook up each person to an EEG. Demographics are a bit skewed based on gender and age, but as a pilot, that probably isn’t that big of a deal.

I’m not seeing anything egregious, and it was published in a peer reviewed journal. I would treat this as a single data point and wait for other researchers to replicated it and prod at the methodology more.

There’s a quote I heard a few years ago: everyone is a technology company now and the game they’re playing is recurring revenue stream. If it’s cloud connected then pretty much assume they are going to find a way to monetize and profit from your information.