Readers may recall Eugene Koonin as not particularly a Darwinian. As of 2018, Dieter Braun was more ambivalent.
But Mazur notes that something has changed:
The scientific establishment could not hope for two more effective polemicists than Eugene Koonin and Dieter Braun to guard the Darwinian thought-style. But why would Koonin and Braun want to do so when they are on record (I’ve interviewed both at length) as skeptics of its metaphorical language? Nevertheless, a recently published PNAS paper in the pipeline for five months and edited by Koonin (an NAS member) about an experiment led by Braun (and funded in part by the Simons Foundation) is rife with antiquated Darwinian selection references, such as: “Darwinian selection,” “naturally selected,” “some form of selection guiding single nucleotides,” “getting selected,” “fittest sequence,” “overall fitness,” “robust creation,” “survivor sequences,” “mass extinction” (partial list).
Suzan Mazur, “Let Darwinian Selection R.I.P.” at Oscillation
Is this some light they have seen or has someone warned them to be more submissive?

She notes that the paper has been hyped as suggesting that Darwinian evolution preceded life.
Eric Anderson notes that pre-life Darwinism is gaining traction as an idea now, even though — in the absence of as-yet-unknown laws of physics and chemistry that would support it, it doesn’t make sense.
Note: Suzan Mazur is the author of Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology and other fine books, many of which are asking the hard questions about Darwinism, via interviews, that most journalists avoid.
See also: Suzan Mazur At Oscillations: “Natural Selection” Unit Removed From AP Biology Exam Most likely it was a combination of Mazur getting on the story and a general recognition that full-on Darwinism just isn’t cutting it any more. Stuff that worked in the 1980s isn’t going to fly now that genomes are routinely mapped.