No, not that authority, silly.
Us.
And quite right too.
My response in the Achenblog comments is below the fold...
"I think that even scientists sometimes in the thrill of announcing discoveries overstate the degree of certainty. This may be then exaggerated by journalists. No?" - Achenblog response in comments
Joel - I'm shocked. Or do I mean thrilled.
I can't believe you'd say journalists exaggerate.
I think you're spinning "think" to be synonymous with "know"...
We do not as of right now, know very much about extrasolar terrestrial planets (the exception being the PSR1257 planets, which and arguably one or two "hot super-Earths", but the data we do have constrains what systems may be out there. The primary caveat is the selection effects on our observations and how well we understand them.
The "zeroth level" understanding of dynamics of "hot Jupiters", which are the planetary systems we mostly know about, is that habitable terrestrial planets would be destroyed or ejected in them.
A more careful analysis shows that is not true, terrestrial planets may survive and persist in these systems, and to the extent we understand the physics, we can quantify the probability of this, and speculate on what their detailed physical nature might be.
Therefore we ought to look, to see what is really there.
We claim that some of the "hot Jupiter" systems are good candidates to look at for habitable planets, and we predict which ones we think are the best bet.
We may be wrong, that is the point - it is a falsifiable prediction.
And we throw in the usual baggage of speculation, because we can.
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