Is this just another attempt to make Earth, the Milky Way, and humanity's placement in the universe not special (and yes, you could state that the same argument could be made by geocentrists)? Considering they have difficulty sizing up the Milky Way, they shouldn't be so quick to unilaterally state that Andromeda is the largest galaxy in the Local Group.
Well I have a feeling we are not alone....
It strikes me as another nail in the coffin of supposed cosmological constant studies. We don't know what is out there, so we should 't be playing number games to try to make it fit into our models of the universe. Our time is much better spent trying to see what is than trying to figure out what isn't.
It's an attempt to see what is.