There is also evidence that pessimism can save your life, which does not seem to be taken into account in the study. Particularly in times of pandemic ...

Catalan numbers and Catalan constant are two different things. The former are a well-known sequence of integers while the latter is a real constant. In fact, the paper only refers to the real constant. Motherboard's report is a bit confusing to this respect. By the way, the fifth Catalan number is ... 42.