Also, paper writing is a collaborative effort, which does not imply that everyone on the paper agrees with every part of it 100%. e.g. if I get Jane on the pape

Also, paper writing is a collaborative effort, which does not imply that everyone on the paper agrees with every part of it 100%. e.g. if I get Jane on the paper because she knows the more than me about X, but we end up having a soft disagreement about X, I'm not walking away from the paper. Also ... authors have good reason to manage their interactions with journalists. They don't want to be used or misrepresented. Also, given the politics of the moment, they also had every reason to be cautious about what they said publicly.