[psychphysic]

The estimate is the estimate (1280 with SEM of 131).

It's be foolish of them to mask it intentionally.

Once independent estimates are made then you might synthesize an reasonable estimate.

Both the editor summary I'm science and the headline here don't place much emphasis on the precise number.

[adhesive_wombat]

The actual linked article isn't the paper, and doesn't even name the paper as far I can tell, it's just given as "Hu, W. et al. Science 381, 979–984 (2023)." in a footnote.

This is the actual paper, which (presumably, I cannot access) is specifically about how they made the estimate: Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487