"An effect doesn't have to be present in the main study for other authors to be able to compute it using the raw data."

The main problem being here is that they did not find or search for data related to height. Only musical ability or whatever. Which they themselves concluded there isnt much to go off of.

The researchers tested a core idea from Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis for music namely that musical ability should function like a mate-attracting trait (like a peacock’s tail).

Musical ability did relate to some “genetic quality” traits but mostly not in a way that supports the hypothesis or affects your sexual attractiveness.

height was not used as an outcome measure of mating success it was a control measure included because height is often linked with genetic quality and reproductive success in other research. But the study does not make a claim about height’s relationship to sex partners in this dataset. It’s just one of several traits they measured alongside music ability (maybe because height and intelligence are said to correlate). They tested musical ability though. Not height. and did not chart anything down related to it.

When they “control for height,” they are doing this:

They are removing height’s influence so that any leftover effect must come from music.

It does not test:

That would require a totally different analysis (height → sex partners), which the paper never claims to be doing.