The article is about an author writing a weird sarcastic screed about a pretty common kitchen technique. “Neutral methods” is a rather odd way of describing that.
Also, five minutes wouldn’t be enough to test your suggested method given its required 8-minute cook time 
But seriously, if you can’t understand that putting the egg into cold water and timing it from there makes the outcome dependent on a host of uncontrolled variables, then I don’t know what to tell you. That is not a reproducible method. Period.
