Spin is more complicated! That the reason that force the sum of the four 1/2 spin particles to have spin 0, 1 or 2. It has a nice mathematical reason that is the SU(2) group representations.
All the experiments so far agree with this rules. The rule for four 1/2 particles can be tested with electron in small molecules or light atoms. The extension to other amount of electron and particles with spin 1/2 have also been tested. (The technical name is "fermions", IIRC this includes also particles with spin 3/2.)
The theory includes also rules for particles with spin 1 (like the photon), and the extended rules also agree with the experiments. I'd be more surprised that the rules for spin have to be changed than the other claims in this paper (that are also quite surprising).