Just because some member of the Church believes or says something doesn't make it doctrine.
This is a problem for most religions these days. Some random person says something is part of their religion, and everyone on the internet and the media believe it.
It's like whenever some Catholic priest in some backwater says something that is not in line with Catholic teaching, the news picks up on it as if it came out of the Pope's mouth. Then it gets repeated ad nauseam across the internet by people who don't know, or can't be bothered to find out, if it's true or not.
The LDS church has an interesting tiered conception of doctrine, wherein some things that have been taught by LDS prophets are not in fact official doctrine. People tend to ignore the "space doctrine" most of the time too.
(Your point about relative comfort at this fact may remain true independent of this observation.)