Smell test means different things to different people. If many articles from many different sources point to sugar consumption causing health related problems, I'm going with trying to reduce my consumption but I do understand where you are coming from. I alway go back to statistics and numbers can be scewed to prove pretty much whatever you want to prove (with the caveat of most of the time ☺).

Fast food fever: reviewing the impacts of the Western diet on immunity
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4074336/

PubMed has a lot of docs on the topic
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=refined%20sugar%20immune%20system

Not sure I'm qualified to answer your original question but my thought is that it doesn't take too much to look at western culture like the U.S and other countries diet vs eastern culture to see that refined sugar consumption is a problem (IMHO). Dumb question on my part - are you looking for scientific proof to stop or reduce sugar intake, or is it just seeing the article you mentioned and not agreeing with their assumptions?