“So what’s the upshot?”
I doubt there is a direct political motive for this theory (besides funding), but historians do tend to investigate things for the oddest of reasons/interests, and maybe the researcher is just interested in the topic.
Ah yes, but there lies the rub ... when a researcher is looking for gub-mint funding, then said researcher has to of course, find that his research comes to one or another currently politically correct conclusion in order to pry loose the pesoes from the Treasury, so to speak.