Fair enough, but I think that makes this a lesson in the importance of context.
When someone uses quotes in their own informal original writing, they will often be received as scare quotes[1]. Knowing nothing about that author, I would assume he is using the word with some detachment. He knows the analysis wasn't trying to guess the pope, but he is having fun with the fact that the analysis pointed in the right direction.
When someone uses quotes to summarize something someone else wrote or said, especially when it is in a more formal context like a headline, it generally comes across as a direct quote. The headline therefore implies that the goal of this exercise was to predict the pope, which the article directly refutes.
The quote in the context of the headline wasn't "guessed" it was "How we 'guessed' the Pope using network science".
