What would be ironic given that quote from the article is if we nudged it into the path of a larger asteroid and that collision sent the larger, dangerous asteroid into our path. Perhaps the larger asteroid fragments in a way to increase the probability of a collision with the fragments.

Don't get me wrong... I do agree with you that all of these scenarios are extremely unlikely (space is really big) and I do think the experiment is worth doing. But still, there are failure modes and unintended consequence opportunities that should at least be thought about a bit, even if a very little bit.