Well...

  Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering and former Head of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), leads the MIT-Germany program, and is Principal Investigator on numerous national and international research program... [he] is a founder of the emerging research area of materiomics. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio outlets to explain the impact of his research to broad audiences. 

I think this guy's just playing political/journalistic games with his research, and tailoring it for impact rather than rigor. I'm not sure I endorse it necessarily, but I don't think we should write this off as "dumb article from MIT", but rather "the explorations of a media-savvy department head". That doesn't excuse the occasional overselling of results of course, as that's dangerous to science no matter the motivation.