I'll agree & disagree, agree that main goal is to extract oils but if you can do a good job in estimating IBUs from your whirlpool hop addition than you can cut back on your bittering addition as well...aka less hops required. If you go back to the one of the original studies that looked into the effects of whirlpool hopping done by several Rock Bottom breweries, you'll find that with hot hop stands, the 80minute whirlpool had a more intense hop flavor & aroma than a 50minute hop stand. That means that even at those temps (probably near or above 200F), hop oils are still being extracted and that you're still getting more oils into solution than driven off by vaporization. Also the hop stands only beers beat out the dry hop only beers for hop flavor showing that hot hop stands are superior to room temp for extracting flavor component oils.
I've done one experiment testing a two stage hop stand vs. a 175F whirlpool. Two stage had one addition at flameout and 30min whirlpool, then dropped temp to 175F and a second addition for 15mins whirlpool. The 175F whirlpool used same amount of hops for a 45 min whirlpool. Tasters were given blind tastings, 4 of 5 were able to distinguish in a triangle and 3 of 4 preferred the two stage. This is only one test and there were too many variables I did not fully take into account such as yeast pitching rates...ergo not really valid, but enough to convince me to stick with the hot hopstand for now.
While I don't follow your experiment (I'm sure it's interesting, but "distinguish in a triangle" lost me), I've done about 3 dozen hopstands personally w/ most common variations on the theme, so whatever I say is just experience talking, not any attempt at empiricism. The rock bottom experiment could easily be explained by the fact that one is 80min and one is 50min. It could easily have nothing to do with the heat.
I do believe you can probably extract more oils more quickly with heat, but I'm skeptical the difference is anything that a few more minutes of hopstanding at the lower temps wouldn't cancel out.
I'd bet you could get even more compelling results from a blind tasting of dryhopped vs. non-dryhopped beer...so if that's the case where's the evidence that it's the heat that is making the magic?
You have a point about maybe brewers doing hopstands WANT to get IBUs from their FO/WP Hops...but I doubt you'd save much hops since utilization is virtually nil in those FO additions vs. incredible utilization of hops in a 60-90 or FWH addition. Ultimately, I question how much hops you could actually save by doing this.
All that said. For me, it's not about IBUs it's about DMS, and I am highly sensitive to it. FWIW, a very well known SD brewery uses 190F hopstands and I have tasted DMS in one of their more in demand, High-end beers, and had this confirmed by a high ranking BJCP judge because I thought maybe I was just suffering from confirmation bias about DMS and high temp hopstands.
I've been down the DMS road though on another thread regarding hopstands, and I don't care to debate it. It's a fact that a large chunk of the population can't even taste DMS, so I learned in another thread not to argue with those who say it's a non-issue with two row.
Edit: sorry, there's a lot in your post so I keep coming back after trying to read it to glean more understanding: What's with the dryhop only is less then hopstand only? I don't buy that. If there's an actual study done then it had better try to control for the time since the dryhop. Clearly a freshly dryhopped beer is the best way to have a great hop aroma IMHO, and I believe this is exactly why the hoprocket exists. But I admit, that's opinion, and again point out, not empirical science.
