No, the stories also made it into Newsweek and Time, which were pretty much the dominant credible news weeklies at the time, circulated to many millions of hous

No, the stories also made it into Newsweek and Time, which were pretty much the dominant credible news weeklies at the time, circulated to many millions of households. It's easy to look back now and say that was just sloppy work with little impact which has since been overblown, but I remember some academic authority figures in my young life taking the idea seriously a decade later as a result. It was delivered with an imprimatur of authority from multiple sources and left an imprint for a long time.