I agree; that is basically my take, with two slight amendments: I didn’t have the sense there was a value judgement (more/less severe), so much as that CHIP is

I agree; that is basically my take, with two slight amendments: I didn’t have the sense there was a value judgement (more/less severe), so much as that CHIP is “typical” mutation seen in the wider population, associated with aging (itself a fascinating field of research), whereas something novel / nonstandard is causing CH mutations (space?? That’s the implication). On sample size, I read it as “this is interesting preliminary work that is surprisingly robust for the sample we have, and thus intrinsically notable.” But the passage you cite and the surrounding discussion indicates that this is far from conclusive—it’s a promising / interesting direction for more research to find out what’s the “there” there, if anything. These things _could_ be coincidental, but such a high rate of consistency is strong signal to investigate further. This paper propagates that surprising result, which is also a unique analysis because of the lack of data the authors acknowledge. Without publishing this, others would have no access to even this preliminary finding.