Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not dissing their credentials. I just like to think of my group as the current leading edge researchers in this area (you know... we built this new big expensive collider and all...).
Mini-black holes are hypothesized, yes. But why wouldn't they be? I still think they are out there, just that they are not being created in the upper atmosphere by heavy collisions. I predict they require far greater energies to form.
I disagree that these are observations of black holes.
Off topic, I note that I'm comming up as a nay-sayer on several of your topics. It's nothing personal.