Teaching metrics--again with the teaching metrics

From the planet obvious, Inside Higher Ed writes that gender doesn't matter in successful teaching. Nor does age or scholarship. Well, I threw in the scholarship.

The findings, though, I think are flawed. Well, the findings I agree with, but the methodology I find flawed. In order to control for gender, the study looked at cattle-call classes where the prof didn't actually interact with the students much at all. The article cites:
the authors limited their research to large introductory courses where instructors don’t grade exams and students typically have little interaction with faculty. That way, the results would be likelier to reflect how gender factored into the equation, as opposed to how well a student got to know a faculty member or what type of reputation an instructor had earned with higher-level students.

The study then concludes that gender is not a factor. What they should have concluded was that this type of class (large, relatively anonymous--what of the gender of the TA?) is genderless. What of the smaller, more intimate major courses? Are they really looking at teaching styles over gender anyway?

Where do these people come from?