Traditional media has awful citation conventions. Basically the journalist adds a vague source just to wash his/her hands in case the story turns out to be fals

Traditional media has awful citation conventions. Basically the journalist adds a vague source just to wash his/her hands in case the story turns out to be false. In this case an Australian paper refers to a British paper (without a link or an exact reference) and the story is about a German scientific publication. So this is third or fourth hand story, and you can just guess how much has been lost in translation.