Derek Lowe as a science communicator, and others like him, is sorely needed to understand the real meaning and significance of the study and others. I say that as someone with a PhD in chemistry who's been to plenty of presentations on drug discovery topics.

It's difficult to calibrate statements made by other scientists unless you're well embedded within a field: Is this someone whose opinions matter? Are they the subject matter expert they make themselves out to be? Is this research itself truly impactful? Is it really 5 years until it will be realized outside of academic labs? Etc...

It's difficult to decipher questions around credibility because they rely on real-world interactions and associations that extend beyond the physical tokens of paper counts, publication venues, citations, and author lists that typically lag behind the front of human knowledge which is generated from real-world interactions. It can be simple things, like the insightful question a grad student, with minimal publication history, asks in a seminar.

Of course, the paywall is also unhelpful too, but a good, brief commentary by an appropriate commentator is a better link for 99% of prospective readers compared to most "peer reviewed" (scare quotes because that's a real question nowadays) articles.

OP here: the title of the thread still links to Derek Lowe's blog post, but the article discussed in the blog post was added to the body of the original post (not by me).