The following was posted in the BOINC forums:

<begin post cut & paste>

Posted: 10 Jul 2004 23:46:16 UTC

A not quite official explanation but closer than most of the guesses in this
thread:
Someone saw that the alpha and beta estimates were 1/6th of what they should
have been then changed the estimate on all three sites, instead of just
those 2.

John Keck
BOINCing since 2002/12/08

</end post cut & paste>

A member of the BOINC dev team responded with the following:

<begin response cut & paste>

Posted: 12 Jul 2004 6:15:53 UTC
in response to Message ID 6749.

Fine, I'll pipe in here, this was a change that David, Jeff, and myself were
not notified of before it was made. Tomorrow I'll be talking to the Dev that
made the change and possibly revert it back to the original number or at
least drop the numbers a bit.

A bug hasn't been filed on it yet, and depending on tomorrows conversation
may not be necessary.

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley

</end response cut & paste>

From the following thread:

http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=1243#6356
-- 
Strat