A nitpick: the study the article links to is published on Arxiv, rather than an academic journal. This implies these findings have not yet been subjected to peer review. Since the authors have previously stated their support of Rossi, this somewhat detracts from their claim to be independent and academic.
Yes, the paper is not peer-reviewed yet. However, given the time it takes to go through a review process, it is not surprising that the authors publish a techreport on arXiv.
In any case, this is much better than what anybody anticipated.