I practised picking locks on your house and broke the lock because of a poor lock design. Yeah okay the lock sucks. But I probably shouldn't have been doing it on your house in the first place and now you've got a broken lock. Who are you mad at?
A researcher could have bought their own copy of the lock and picked it there. Or even borrowed yours with some notice, or let you know so you could have them use an interior door instead, or any number of other things that didn't break your actual house.
That is not really a matching comparison. With BGP, there is kind of public space (global BGP tables) and participants are free to attach valid attributes to their routes. From a cursory look, these researchers used announcement that was compliant with BGP standards (in contrast to Ben Cartwright-Cox from this article, who used fuzzed invalid attributes), so they did something that was generally acceptable behavior for BGP participants.
"I can get into this lock" will not have the same effect or call to action as "I can get into your doors" but it admittedly has to be aimed at the landlords, not the doormen.
A researcher could have bought their own copy of the lock and picked it there. Or even borrowed yours with some notice, or let you know so you could have them use an interior door instead, or any number of other things that didn't break your actual house.