I don't think it's a matter of NASA inflating a story to make headlines. This paper was published in Science, IIRC. A lot of papers published in Nature and Science turn out to be wrong.
Science and Nature are supposed to vet them for errors akin to those mentioned in the article. That's why they are considered "peer reviewed".
Interesting to see what comes of this. If not true now, this won't be that far off from happening I think. Cool
