The “science” is just based on corals preferentially taking up ammonia over nitrate, nitrate stressing corals in some scenarios (corals in nitrate and elevated temps fare worse than corals in ammonia at the same elevated temps), and nitrate taking extra energy to use as an N source.
Do corals in ordinary reef tanks fare better in some way when they have all the ammonia they need vs when they must use nitrate? That is very hard to test since we cannot know what exactly they are using in our tanks.
