Yes, you have a great point. But if the HWC team is running their script each week now, the question is: had they started doing so after last reorganization at the end of last year or was it their practice already in the past. If this frequency of checking is a new thing, that could mean that the past may not be a good indicator of the future. The exoplanets from the last of these January updates (this year) were discovered in different months, including two in January 2023, so there was a lag between preprints and update of HWC catalog - the question is: Where does it come from? From the previous organization of work in HWC or from the databases being updated at the end of the year?
I think the (correct) points you raise actually contribute to the overall uncertainty, which (almost by definition) advises against extremizing (the latter implies certainty); and there are potentially other, additional issues here: what the RFI team exactly asked, what the HWC people exactly answered, how accurate/reliable/sincere their reply was, what possible "interpretation space" there was between the HWC reply and the clarification text as issued etc...
Let me remind you that, according to their reply to me, we should have had an update in late May, which by mid-October has not yet happened...
I agree with you (I agreed with you even before reading your forecast from today), and I have done some additional analysis, I will update my forecast today, and it will go up to reflect this.
Passage of time. @michal_dubrawski's great analysis below notwithstanding, I, like @DimaKlenchin, prefer to hedge rather than to extremise, mainly due to the often "bursty" behavior of new updates.
I think the (correct) points you raise actually contribute to the overall uncertainty, which (almost by definition) advises against extremizing (the latter implies certainty); and there are potentially other, additional issues here: what the RFI team exactly asked, what the HWC people exactly answered, how accurate/reliable/sincere their reply was, what possible "interpretation space" there was between the HWC reply and the clarification text as issued etc...
Let me remind you that, according to their reply to me, we should have had an update in late May, which by mid-October has not yet happened...
Hurrah! 😀