If you mean the research Exercise won’t help you lose much fat. Changing this will | BBC Science Focus Magazine by Herman Pontzer, I'd say he's in a narrow field researcher of hunter-gatherer and subsistence farmers, which is an atypical comparator cohort.
Either he, or the article writer, has tied themselves in knots, while contradicting themselves around the basic concepts of BMR and activity energy expenditure (TDEE) and provide no workings to back up the findings.
"But a major new study challenges that long-standing belief. Collating data on more than 4,200 people across 34 different countries, researchers found that people who exercise more don’t burn more calories than those who sit around all day.
In fact, the research found that, matched pound-for-pound, a hunter-gatherer from Tanzania’s Hadza community burns about the same number of calories each day as a typical US office worker – even though the Hadza are more active in a single day than most Americans are in an entire week".
The article claims the similarities are due to adaptation to reach homeostasis (nope) and the article ascribes the majority of calorie burn to BMR - this last part is correct. Basal Metabolic rate is largely mass dependent, with an age factor, or if you're splitting hairs, a more accurate BMR is based on lean mass
The larger people (with a higher BMR) are moving less, but eat the same as the smaller people (with a lower BMR), moving more
What's the key thing missing?
The explanatory power of the differing activity levels between the two groups as cause for similar calorific demands (which I am sceptical of).
If the office workers consistently ate at/around BMR, they would people feel bit more sluggish, but no noticeable weight loss and because the activity factor is low and their body would go into scavenger mode. If they ate at BMR - 500 cals for extended periods, bad things would start to happen, namely muscle wasting and hormonal disruption.
If the Hadza ate at their BMR and not as the report claims - the same calories as the office worker, but still walked however many miles per day, occasionally sprinted after their tea, this higher activity factor beyond their BMR (aka exercise) would result in a net deficit on TDEE and therefore weight loss.
The TDEE and associated activity levels as drivers of successful weight loss is reiterated here, which contains numbers to back up their conclusion
"The high levels of PAEE and TDEE observed in individuals maintaining a substantial weight loss (−26.2±9.8 kg maintained for 9.0±10.2 years) suggest that this group relies on high levels of energy expended in physical activity to remain in energy balance (and avoid weight regain) at a reduced body weight."
The other factor is that most people over-estimate how many cals a workout burns and I don't count sitting on machines doing leg raises or lat pull downs as exercise, although muscles will burn more calories at rest than fat.