This is my field, and I can't tell, nor do I want to look up yet more papers to figure it out when they don't say it plain. But with methods sections relegated to footnote status, what do we expect? Of course they don't know how to write a paper, and/or of course the reviewers and editors can't tell that it's too vague.

Medical publishing is still a cartel, and academic medicine is always attached to big business enterprises. They want to see the number go up. Meanwhile, manuscript submission fees are in the thousands, and journals are insisting on shorter and shorter deadlines for the unpaid peer reviewers. It's a shit show.