Paper in 2016, first chance to empirically test the theory was in late January 2017, and now it's early June when a paper about the test makes it into a journal

Paper in 2016, first chance to empirically test the theory was in late January 2017, and now it's early June when a paper about the test makes it into a journal. Seems reasonable to wait for a published paper post-test before declaring it "solved", yes?