Hearing someone defend something when they have a dog in the fight has way less credibility/impact than the identical defense from a source that is neutral, or even opposed to the topic.
At no time did I question the validity of anything in the article, merely pointed out that the source would be EXPECTED to have those conclusions.
You might try studying the English language.
How might one be ‘opposed’ to a topic?
Your assumption of neutrality of any agency benefitting from taxes or grants is also laughable. All real science is vested in free enterprise. Universities that accept government grants to manipulate data are the antithesis of science. The fact that a profit can be extracted from the real world operation of a theoretical proposition is by definition validation.