> the general reliance on RT score for any movie

The reliance of RT score for what? What are people routinely extrapolating from the RT score that you think is not valid?

Extrapolating budget from the RT score is definitely invalid: you've shown that. But who does that?

People might go the other way: extrapolate quality from a big budget (it must be good, it's a big blockbuster), but as you say, that correlation is valid (though noisy).

So not quite sure what you're standing by, sorry. I don't want to sound rude and argumentative. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm very happy to concede your analysis is applicable where it is, I just genuinely don't understand what you're referring to here.