I am pretty sure that what you say in your PS is so obvious, at least to anyone who cares what the mass of the W boson is to a precision of ~±2e-4, that it does

I am pretty sure that what you say in your PS is so obvious, at least to anyone who cares what the mass of the W boson is to a precision of ~±2e-4, that it does not need saying. What does need saying is how bad the disagreement is, and when you are at the point where this difference has arisen and cannot quickly be resolved, publishing all the papers seems to be the best way to give the most complete information, available at that time, about the problem. Once the contradictory Fermilab results were made available, what should the ATLAS group do? Well, one thing would be to double-check their own analysis, and it seems plausible that this is what led to the latest result. Using improved methods might just as well have revealed a problem as end up as it did, supporting the original analysis.