You're missing the point: I didn't set out to refute the claim of 10x. I set out to refute that the claim had been proven.

> If you're going to refute McConnell or even Peopleware, you've got to do a study.

What McConnell has published isn't empirical, or scientific; argument suffices to refute it.

That goes for DeMarco and Lister, too - Peopleware was a popular book, not an empirical study aiming at establishing scientific fact.