The tomographic redshift-dipole estimator barely responds to the observer's velocity in DESI-like quasar samples cut on observed redshift

The Doppler dipole in spectroscopic redshifts has been used to test, independently of source counts, whether the excess quasar and radio-source number-count dipole reflects our motion. Recent measurements with the tomographic redshift-dipole estimator report 196 km/s (combined eBOSS tracers), 443.8 km/s and 357.95 km/s (DESI DR1 quasars). Injection-recovery on 16 DESI DR1 EZmock quasar realisations and on the shuffled real DR1 catalogue shows that when the sample is cut on observed redshift from a parent that extends beyond the cut, the estimator's response to the injected velocity is consistent with zero: 0.014 (95% interval −0.057 to 0.085) for FM24's eBOSS-quasar configuration, −0.031 for the public code, 0.039 for a transcription of the published DESI equations. Cut on true redshift before the shift, the same estimators respond at 0.994, 0.996 and 0.956; a light-cone ending at the analysis limits gives 0.446. A three-dimensional grid search does not restore the response. In these tests the calibration comes from the sharp edges of the redshift window. Mock validations that recover an injected velocity can be passed by mocks cut on true redshift even when the estimator does not respond in a real catalogue; unless the published validation mocks were re-cut after boosting, the 196 and 357.95 km/s velocities have not been shown to be calibrated. The Chen et al. configuration and eBOSS itself were not tested. A whole-sample regression keeps a response of 0.258 in mocks, but on the real catalogue it is dominated by a weighted-redshift offset between imaging regions. The deposit contains all scripts, per-run outputs, the aggregation producing every number, and a checker that tests every result-dependent statement in the note.