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I believe the article attempts to account for your concern.

• orbitingpluto 8y ago
  Humanity has only been searching for exoplanets for a very short time. That's why there are relatively few candidates farther than 1 AU out. It's somewhat like arguing that all lattes are comprised of milk only because we've only taken the first sip.
  • spectre256 8y ago
    I'm not sure why you were downvoted, that's a beautiful analogy.
• KnightOfWords 8y ago
  The author may well have found a real pattern, but it may only apply to a subset of planetary systems. Kepler is biased towards detecting large planets with short orbital periods. Perhaps tightly packed systems have similar sized planets because this is a more stable arrangement. However, more widely spaced systems - which we have far less data on - may not show this pattern. We're learning something here but we don't really have enough information to know how remarkable our solar system is.