You're asking people here to put their faith in a comment by some rando (i.e. you) over a well-reputed publication that millions of people have been relying on for decades. I think most will balk at the idea, and I'm one of them. No offense.
I’ve seen journalists get it wrong enough in my own field that I don’t trust any sensational headline anymore. The world is complicated and you need specialization to make any sense of specific domain. Journalists are mostly professional dilettantes and I don’t trust them in any halfway technical field. I’ve been burned too many times.
The critique was valid on its face. Measuring extremely small quantities is difficult and results should be given with error bars. The critique of the threshold was also clear.
We don't need to know exactly where this person got their degree to understand this.