Actually, only part of the above is true. The part that is true is that pipe smokers have long known about the health benefits of pipe smoking. Some of the best thinkers and geniuses of all time, like Albert Einstein and Mark Twain were pipe smokers. Pipe smoking does in fact relax you.
This is where the piece directly signals that it is not satire. I think that's the root of the problem here. What I did was look for the original study as a means of figuring out if it was satire or not, and not finding it, assumed it was a non-serious article.
The discussion about IQ is related, but not unimportant. Discerning satire is hard on the internet because so much is "over-written" at this point, so it's wise not to break the fourth wall and address the audience's concerns that it might be satire by claiming that parts of it are true.
Here's the latest example of how people do not click-through and actually read an article, but feel free to comment on it anyway. 5-years ago I wrote a short (five paragraphs) PARODY news story to make fun of a real news story that I thought was total BS. It got resurrected in my forums and people are taking it seriously and having serious discussion on it. If you actually READ THE WHOLE THING, it is obvious that it is satire.
https://www.facebook.com/PipesMagazine/posts/1199626146720776
Regardless, I think MSO489 is right: this is a beguiling topic and an important one.
In fact, I think it's two topics:
(1) The cognitive benefits of nicotine.
(2) Why it is that (some) smarter people seem to smoke pipes.