I didn’t say there are no benefits, I said the evidence is mixed. But benefits are always relative to something else. And we are not discussing the benefit of handwriting vs being illiterate, so the relevant comparison is with writing other than by hand. The very next paragraph (“By contrast…”) starts making the point that typing, too, has benefits of its own, so it's not clear that handwriting is better across the board. And the following paragraphs over the page start looking at the quality of the actual written output, where the picture is even less clear.

Moreover, it's important to be precise and not conflate claims about the benefit of handwriting with claims about the benefit of CURSIVE specifically.

As I've said, that's a condensed version anyhow. I’ll share some pieces that were cut here.

“There exists a long history of considering cursive handwriting specifically — flowing scripts that connects letters and adds flourishes — as a cornerstone of traditional Western education, and hand-wringing polemics about its decline (Enstrom 1965; Doug 2019). By contrast, the author of a social history of handwriting Anne Trubek of the same generation as Doug confidently opines in the New York Times that “Handwriting just doesn’t matter” (Anne Trubek 2016), at least in the sense that not everyone needs to be able to use it.

While there is little firm evidence overall establishing a benefit of cursive over disconnected handwriting styles, some studies do suggest benefits of cursive specifically (Semeraro et al. 2019). But whatever benefits cursive handwriting specifically may have in theory, attempts to reintroduce or keep it as a universally taught practice in schools may be doomed by its lack of real-life popularity. Teachers and researchers may disagree on whether cursive is easier for children to learn first (Semeraro et al. 2019). In a study of attitudes in Ankara, Turkey, teachers, parents, and students all preferred the teaching of handwriting print over cursive (Taneri and Akduman 2018). In Germany, the National Association of Primary School Teachers itself was instrumental in campaigning for the removal of mandatory teaching of cursive, in favour of a simplified “basic font”.

Scripts other than Latin may, such as Hebrew, may also feature a clear distinction between a handwriting style emulating printed letters and an alternative flowing cursive script, or different tiers of calligraphic ambition (as in Japanese), but not necessarily an equivalent loaded debate concerning the civilizational value of two competing everyday scripts. Either way, many languages do have instruments for assessing handwriting in their script, e.g., Farsi (Meimandi et al. 2020) or Malayalam (Gafoor and Naseer 2015).

...

Notably, a systematic review found that cognitive psychology and neuroscience research tends to find results in favour of handwriting for writing skills, while (largely qualitative) studies with a socio-cultural perspective tend to find in favour digital writing (Wollscheid, Sjaastad, and Tømte 2016). The former studies tend to focus on (quasi-)experimental settings and relatively narrow outcomes, in some cases at the level of the brain. The latter studies were more likely to adopt a view of literacy practices embedded in real-life activities. In other words, differences in the effect of teaching one or the other on various cognitive or learning outcomes can be found in theory, but in practice there is clear advantage in either direction. Moreover, any disadvantage of digital writing found in the 1990s and 2000s might be receding as computer familiarity increases in the population (Vasylets and Marín 2022).”

The bottom line is that the evidence is mixed and nuanced.
- "Handwriting" ≠ cursive
- The distinction isn't even clear cut: are the claimed benefits only for writing with a pen on paper? What about a stylus on a tablet?
- What's true for Latin script need not be true for other scripts.
- Theoretical neuro-cognitive benefits can be overwhelmed by real-life application context (familiarity, motivation).
- What's beneficial for the writer's brain need not be beneficial for the quality of the written product.
- Effects are different for note-taking vs long-form writing.
- etc. etc.