No. The whole complex is to blame here, the scientists didn't do some rigorous open ended work. All of the scientists of course already believed that foreign aid is effective and beneficial (it is generally neither, especially not in the way it is actually practiced, where you dump random things into some poor place of the world and then leave) and are now gathering evidence to support that position so that articles like this can be written.
It is of course somewhat hilarious to claim 300k deaths without being able to point to a single actual death. All of this pseudo debate exists to mask the actual question under contention. Given the enormous amounts of resources the west has poured into the poorest places on earth, when do we see the positive results? The only measurable result is that over time only more and more is needed, which of course simultaneously undermines the premise of foreign aid and paradoxically makes it more important.