To expand on your comment, it seems to me that the method by which they tested only gave results for which target they found more attractive. "Silencing your b

To expand on your comment, it seems to me that the method by which they tested only gave results for which target they found more attractive. "Silencing your bacteria" would still result in non-zero attractiveness due to other factors such as warmth and CO2. It presumably would therefore not actually repel mosquitoes, and you would still be bitten in the absence of better targets (this is especially true if the other nearby targets used the same approach).