I feel like the author read the autocorrelation result, hated it and ignored the central point. There are ways to bucket data that removes the autocorrelation

I feel like the author read the autocorrelation result, hated it and ignored the central point. There are ways to bucket data that removes the autocorrelation and in those experiments we also see the DK effect disappear. Trying to argue that we should study the effect with the autocorrelation present but ignore the autocorrelation for 'reasons' is not the way forward.