I'm not accepting this real until a respected news network investigates it. That and the fact that they didn't seem to spell check / proof-read it first makes me suspicious.
Wait, seriously? I thought you were being sarcastic until I read the second sentence. Mainstream news networks in infamously bad at evaluating the accuracy of scientific research, and often end up reporting ridiculous things even if they're drawing inspiration from valid science.
The way to evaluate the validity of normal scientific research is typically to see if any respectable research journal has published it. And as far as I can tell PLOS counts as a respectable journal. Before you really start believing the results you want to look for other people duplicating the results, but publication itself means that yes, this is serious.
"respected news network" at least from my point of view, this is a bit of an oxymoron, call me paranoid, but I'll take a good peer reviewed academic paper for my facts any day.
