Comment by bhawks

The author of the article obviously didn't read the paper.

The paper's finding focuses on goal adjustment/flexibility being a functional response when encountering difficulty meeting a goal. Disengagement had correlations with impairment. Which probably tracks most people's life experience.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02312-4

| This interpretation aligns with our finding that dispositional flex- ibility, rather than more proximal disengagement or reengagement, more strongly predicts functioning. Notably, we observed a positive association between disengagement and impairment. Although this could reflect a ‘dark side’ of disengagement—where letting go of goals offers short-term relief but risks longer-term purposelessness and dysfunction11—this pattern was not evident in longitudinal or experi- mental studies. An alternative explanation is that the association is bidirectional, with impairment potentially prompting disengagement as a reactive strategy. Given these complexities, we advice caution in interpreting this finding and highlight the need for further research.