Well, it's optimized to make the amount of money short term. This kind of testing doesn't tell you what the reader thinks of your site, which is kind-of the OP point.
The user might click through to all the pages, but obtain a general disdain for your site. Not saying that pagination enough to make users hate a site, but for me, personally, it doesn't exactly help.
I hate split articles too, but I believe this way of thinking is common mostly among tech-savvy people. People that don't know technology don't get annoyed by it or, if they do, just assume that this is how the technology works. Since online news are created for the vast majority of readers that are not part of our demographics, they will make more money by just splitting the articles anyway.
If I'm simply tolerating some aspect of a site, it means that as soon as an alternate source of or means for accessing the for the same content shows up - I'll leave and never look back.
The user might click through to all the pages, but obtain a general disdain for your site. Not saying that pagination enough to make users hate a site, but for me, personally, it doesn't exactly help.