In this case, academic research is totally irrelevant to the parent commenter's point.

I've seen countless instances where an anecdote is perfectly reasonable and interesting by itself, yet the anecdote itself is denigrated or at least devalued. [1] I don't like it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to have research at arms length in the general case.

1. I say this anecdotally, of course.