To be fair, I don’t think Yale considers UM a peer either.
“And in this case since the CDS contradicts the schools themselves, so one clearly isn’t …”
The CDS is also the school, just the research dept, and for sure has more accurate information than admissions or anywhere else. Putting something in the CDS vs a FAQ are very different things, typically don’t believe everything on the websites.
“Well UF has more NSF research dollars than USC, Northwestern, UT, UiUC and many more on the official peer list”
First off, UM and Wisconsin are considerably ahead of UF, (#2, #8), those are research powerhouses, so to be expected. And it’s not like UF is way ahead of USC, NU et al, they’re all pretty much in the same general area of R&D spending.