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Does the 'smart vs hard working as praise' study show that calling a child 'smart' is always bad?

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See root moots for the study (click 'open discussion browser' and use the discussion browser's horizontal column to see the hidden column on the left (we're working on making this more intuitive...))

For the sake of this question, let's assume that the study has been repeated many times (I've no idea if it has really).

No

The inherent danger of these kinds of articles lies in the implication that parenting and education must be bifurcated into absolute qualities of black and white: say hard working, not smart; say disadvantaged, not poor; and so on.

Ethically, the study can't raise infants through adulthood and apply completely controlled praise. As such, the complexity involved makes it difficult to discern if the results they're finding can be accurately attributed to language. Students who have heard their wholes lives that they are smart can't have their memories erased at the moment the test is given to ensure that they forget ever being called smart. Likewise, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that so much can be inferred about what a child is thinking. Why didn't they ask these students questions about their performance? Why didn't they give the students an opportunity to self identify as smart or hardworking first?

This kind of study gets applied as a blanket to pedagogical practices, with a result of rules for instructors. Say this, not this; stand this way, not that way. It seems like an effort to make education into a prescription, or a formula: "so long as you perform x, y, z in a, b, c fashion, all students will perform to d, f, g." Read anything by Stephen Pinker, and you'll soon discover that we are not the blank slates so many educators would like us to believe.

What about balanced praise? What about appropriate praise? Heaven forbid that we should criticize children, and teach them to accept both positive and negative feedback and apply them appropriately. God save us if we actually treated children and teenagers respectfully and worked to communicate with them, rather than speaking at them.