In the article the researcher does say that she wants to move from a correlation study, which this is, to a controlled study. They're trying to get funding/appr

In the article the researcher does say that she wants to move from a correlation study, which this is, to a controlled study. They're trying to get funding/approval for that. TBH I'd prefer that researchers at this point would stick to saying that they've made an interesting observation, which they have, and do less of the speculation. Though that would have made a very short and quite dull article so I understand the urge to extrapolate a bit.