Symptoms caused by LED technology and rendering/dithering are not mutually exclusive. The areas of investigation should be split into the following groups, in my opinion.
Category A) Aversion to modern screens (Mobile phone/TV panel, LED Monitors, PWM, Blue light)
Category B) Aversion to modern software rendering techniques/dithering (Mobile phone/TV software, Drivers, VBIOS, OS settings)
Category C) Aversion to modern fonts (Font rendering, default fonts, cleartype settings etc)
Members of each category above are all going to complain of eye strain symptoms in their opinion due to the criteria solely within their own group.
I believe the public's perception of CVS and eye strain lies within categories A and C. It is simple to dismiss category A entirely by picking a non-LED, inoffensive computer monitor/panel for the end user. It is simple to dismiss category C by changing the fonts or adjusting cleartype settings (where available). I agree that font legibility can change depending on the font type/aliasing etc, however this is IMO affecting an even larger minority. For the most part font legibility still has real flexibility in modern tech due to partially sighted users etc and this isn't likely to ever change.
Group B is the group that is always the elephant in the room and people seem to dismiss as nonsense. Take away group A and C (which is trivial to do) and all that is left is how the device outputs video/renders the display. There is no other 'point of failure' from a tech support perspective. Why the focus of discussion always shifts back to backlighting confuses me, perhaps because that is the most plausible aggravator for the majority of users. Besides household lighting (a separate topic of discussion), there are PWM-free/low blue light LED monitors available now.
__528491__ Get real, we have the entire world using these LED screens for the last 5-8 years and for most people they are not a problem. Think on how many people use screens and how many people this forum has. Even accounting that a majority of people that suffers from these problems did not bother write about it on the internet, or does't know about or didn't bother to join this forum, we're talking about some 0.0001% of the population.
I agree that everybody naturally points to the monitor being at fault. You know why? Because for decades monitors were the only thing that caused eye strain! People seem to forget that computers displayed fewer colors, resolutions were much lower, fonts were different, the video signal was analogue. Everybody in the 90's/2000's could live on bleeding edge tech and simply find a comfortable monitor for themselves. In the 95/98/XP era, I never found myself downgrading drivers, or refusing to update software. I typically upgraded my setup every 18 months. Something is drastically wrong with modern technology, and I'm waiting for somebody to prove otherwise.