Most papers that use statistical methods are deeply flawed and not even in a sophisticated way
But depressingly it very often takes less than 5 minutes to find a major flaw
A piece on the impact of the french local elections on Covid in France was widely publicized. As @Emmanuel_LEVY wrote, the stats are total nonsense.
I mean if you start by assuming the conclusion, it won't be hard to prove.
Seriously???
Also I not a tendency to use very sophisticated methods with fancy names...but with 20 or 30 data points. Not robust at all.