They're still sore over it, presenting this about 10 years later: https://www.cryptolux.org/mediawiki-esc2010/images/7/7a/Noek...
To be honest, if I'd design something this elegant, and nobody considers if because of an irrelevant attack, I'd be very sore and alert for it happening again, too.
The post makes those points more explicitly to our attention than any other post I had seen before. Hence, no FUD to me.
Hashing is pretty much a market for lemons - the adopting user is confronted by a complex math they don't understand and there is a definite problem if you drive out with the wrong hash function. And there is no way to tell without actually being miles down the road when you find out whether it was a peach or a lemon.
The choice by a user might come down to the same sort of vague arguments in a used car lot - "I hear Hondas don't break down much".
There's always some "academic influencing" to do more research based off your own papers, which in turn drives more grants to your own branch of research. At least that's what I read off the following quote
> "We feel that the cryptanalysis of more structured designs such as Rijndael/AES or Keccak/SHA-3 leads to publications that provide more insight."
Keccak is a good enough construction that it doesn't need to be promoted with low quality FUD.