Yesterday at Atlantic.com, Hans Villarica posted “Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Fire Up Your Creativity,” a rundown of a research study that alleges moderate noise is beneficial to creativity. While I’m intrigued by the question of noise and individual cognition in public(ish) spaces, the Atlantic post exemplifies the way that research loses its contextual trappings as soon as it enters “the cultural conversation” to become the kind of free-floating “news you can use” that inevitably gets “contradicted” in subsequent studies, undermining people’s faith in the academy. …even the most cursory skim of the actual journal article provides contextual information that undermines Villarica’s pithy, straightforward advice.