What has changed?
I am getting one when I get a new stove, but then again I do not have reticulated gas here.
My mother had one and it was great
This is unfortunately just how the world is. Epistemology is hard, and there are a ton of people out there who make it harder (Three guesses as to whether the author of this article, or any other crappy prestige-publication journalist, thinks they're lying).
It's a scary and confusing world! At some level you just have to internalize that, build the most accurate model that's worth the overhead, and accept that you'll be wrong a lot.
The industries (merchants of doubt) are so active, it's absolutely nontrivial for a well meaning layman not wanting to invest oddles of time to get to good conclusions.
The smoking point is not a problem, the nasty stuff start appearing as couple dozen degrees _above_ the smoking point, so you can use that as an early warning system.
It also contains antioxidants, which bind some of the nasty stuff for a while, so it really is better for you for regular cooking.
Could not disagree more. Olive oil will be spewing smoke and changing flavour well before you get to a sensible temperature for shallow or stir frying. It is very tasty and apparently quite good for you, so it's a great choice for low-temperature cooking, but anywhere smoking point is important, olive oil is not what you're looking for.
What are normal people suppose to do without expertise on any subject.
Not against induction cooking but It is very common for these type of reporting that for induction cooking to succeed they must get rid of every single gas stove. And make gas stove cooking as evil. Start a movement, conjure a trend, make hype.