Self report, not really all that useful.

Why not? Pain is a subjective experience. If someone experience high levels of pain consistently, that is reason to do something about it. Someone else may experience less pain for the same cause, but that doesn't invalidate other experiences. In the end it's about helping people and making their lifes better.

Although for such studies it would be good indeed to factor in socialisation effects. If men are raised to suppress expressing pain when they're in pain, while women are not, that might bias the results.

Do we have a non-invasive method for objectively measuring pain?

Ever get that weird pain in your chest when you stretch or something? I can't tell you how many phantom pains like that I get and ignore but also forget

I don't see how you can do a study about pain without self reporting. No one can say how much pain another person is feeling. Thats why the hospital has that face ruler to get you to give them a number.

They can only ask. Pain is inherently very subjective. eg:

https://xkcd.com/883/

Not that I entirely disagree with your point, but if we're going to talk about being put off of reporting, then how about centuries of women being dismissed by medical professionals?

They didn't, though they do mention pain is complicated to study specifically because diagnosing it necessarily relies on self reporting. This unfortunately makes it virtually impossible to account for that fact. If someone tells you they have some level of pain, there is very little to nothing you can do to know if they are over exaggeratjng, under exaggerating or doing neither.

A more accurate headline would be that women report higher levels of pain across the board, rather than they experience higher levels of pain.

Or standardize the pain scale. A 9 on the scale for me is significantly more pain than a 9 for my wife because I have both a high pain tolerance and threshold. I say 9 because I've never experienced what I'd consider a 10 (pain so intense I lose consciousness).

My vasectomy without anesthesia was a 9.5.

But our response to pain is largely learned.

On the other hand, I get migraines, but they're not even in the top three worst pain I've even experienced. The worst I've ever experienced is a mystery pelvic pain (yes, I'm also female).