To further the damage said article was picked up by mass-market newspapers and circulated widely

The net result of all this ad-driven virality madness is the degradation of trust in obscure but important societal contracts: 1) that academics at the cutting edge of human knowledge can self-regulate through peer-review not only the integrity of a piece of work (not an obvious issue in this case) but can also place its importance and relevance against the entire body of prior knowledge and 2) that journalists disseminating scientific / technical information can act as a check and balance to remedy any deficiencies in 1) instead of amplifying and aggravating them

It feels like we have entered a downward spiral of ever more shrill claims competing for attention in world crushed by low-quality information overload.