"The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 planets drew widespread attention in major world newspapers, social media, streaming television and websites.[302][303] As of 2

"The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 planets drew widespread attention in major world newspapers, social media, streaming television and websites.[302][303] As of 2017, the discovery of TRAPPIST-1 led to the largest single-day web traffic to the NASA website.[304] NASA started a public campaign on Twitter to find names for the planets, which drew responses of varying seriousness, although the names of the planets will be decided by the International Astronomical Union.[305]" From the wiki on Trappist 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1 I think the public interest in it might be driving it? 40 light years is also kinda near to us, which might make it more interesting than Sun like systems if these are 100+ light years for example, if we were to want to do something about a possible detection. Edit0: We don't know much of what conditions drive the genesis of life or where it might survive, so I'm not entirely sure that looking at red dwarves are a waste of time in a search for life. They are also doing fundamental work in clearing up the influence of the star on their measurements!