Rice is one of those things where the science and the old school cooks are both kind of right but talking past each other. The lab study is testing a worst case, like rice sitting at perfect warm room temp with a heavy spore load from the start. Bacillus cereus is real and it grows fast, the one hour thing is for the danger zone temps, not just any room. The guys who left it out overnight mostly got lucky, and also their rice cooled down fast enough or the batch was clean enough that the spores never took off. Problem is you cant tell by looking or smelling, and the bad case hits you 6 to 15 hours later with vomiting or the other end. My rule is simple, rice gets cooled in a shallow pan within an hour of cooking and into the fridge, and if it sat out past 2 hours it goes in the trash. Not worth a coin flip on food poisoning for a dollar of rice. If you really want to push it, reheat it screaming hot and eat it same day, but dont batch cook it and leave it on the counter expecting it to be fine every time.

My cousin dropped 6k on one in San Diego and they split after 3 years, never even looked at the thing. But here's the part people miss. The paper itself isn't the point. It's the conversations you have while making it that matter. You two sat down and talked about money, debt, property, what happens if things go bad. Most couples never do that until it's too late. So yeah 4,800 is a lot but you basically paid for a really hard class on your own relationship. That's not a waste. And if you never touch it? Great. That means it worked.