Moreover, it's not really an "experimental" result; it's an argument that this theory is inconsistent with certain known facts. The known facts were previously derived from experiment, true, but the way the headline is written makes it sound like someone devised an experiment specifically to test gravity-as-emergence, and the results are now in, which is not what happened.

That isn't a bad thing. Consider person A, who says, "Light is a particle, as demonstrated by phenomena B, C, and D." It's perfectly cogent for person E to raise his hand and ask, "But what about phenomena such as interference, refraction, and so on?" E's argument isn't an experimental result, but that's ok, because A's conjecture is required to explain all existing observations before devising falsifiable experiments to conduct.