What data? As I see it, people who make predictions for the next 5 or 10 years and predictions like $500,000, $1 million or more. They hardly provide any analysis or data to make their predictions credible. They seem to just make predictions randomly and with the intention of attracting the attention of the crowd instead of making predictions they believe will happen.
Or they have other purpose like you said, they want more newbies to enter the market, more Fomo in the market to push the price of bitcoin as high as possible and they can close the profit with better profit.
Everyone has the right to make any prediction because it is everyone's right but honestly, I don't like these kind of predictions because it will harm the newbies.
If the speculation only involved a Bitcoin price target that would reach $500k in the future, many would be optimistic that it would happen. But with the added focus on when the target is reached, many would probably say the speculation is just a ploy to attract attention from newcomers.
Just like in the past, when people talked and speculated Bitcoin reaching $100k, many were optimistic and believed, but as for the timing, we never saw anything specifically accurate.