“If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign.”

There is a third: undecided.

“At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting scientist will have had to address at some point in their career: ‘is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its observed discrepancy?’ A sensible answer to this hinges largely on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3, therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is observed rather problematic.”

Not only the heart of the question, but of the paper.

Still fun, though!