News via Chinese Whisper? This is getting a bit out of hand since the actual paper/study is not available. Even the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440947 only links to the previous paper these guys published.

* No one seems to have read the full paper * Is the title misleading? Discussion seems to indicate that this study only addresses the end of year Surge and not the year long surge through 2017.