I say the fuse was lit by the pot-banger too. This was a move by a PC bunch of Duke faculty and they are being rewarded by Duke moving in the direction they wanted.
The N&O did carry a little water for them. The pot-bangers lit the fuse. Of course like you I started following this far after the pop-bangers had played their role and retired to the sidelines.
Looking back, the very first NandO story was 3/24 and was the story of the DNA tests for all the players. That was 10 days after the false accusation. So the potbangers had that amount of time to fan the flames. IIRC, FreeRepublic didn't start any threads until about 3/24 also. Is that about correct?