[Cowen]

I was using "specious" as a synonym of "flawed." Perhaps that was the incorrect usage.

But in the case of advertising a new library/project, which is arguably one of the main functions of the frontpage, flawed benchmarks (though not so far as outright lies) at least give me an objective reason to investigate further.

With no benchmarks, generally I'll open the page, mutter "that's nice" and move on with my business. I'd imagine I'm far from the only person who does that. Young projects don't help themselves when they don't effectively advertise themselves.