There's lots of reporting in the story that is serious and disturbing if true—what's the point of throwing in an anecdote that you acknowledge is bogus? The paper has some bizarre institutional belief that throwing weak stuff on top of strong stuff make the story stronger.
Setting the particular topic aside for a second, this is a truly spectacular case of the Times' pathologically incompetent "Where there's fire, there's smoke" theory of writing up high-stakes investigative stories
