[smif]

The paper seems to be paywalled so I have no clue about how they arrived here, but this: "That said, the results indicate that the probability we are alone (<1) in the galaxy is significant, while the maximum number of contemporary civilizations might be as few as a thousand."

Doesn't seem to really answer anything. Isn't this just a really fancy way of saying "we don't know the solution to the Drake equation"? It could be a 99.999999...% (<100%) chance of being alone, it could be a 0% chance, or anything in between.

Given the title of the paper, this is a very loose definition of "solution" for the Drake equation ("it could be anything!").

[adastra22]

It shows that people doing Drake equation estimates we’re doing their math wrong, and using their own numbers but accounting for uncertainty correctly you get estimates much closer to N=1.