alt Hacker News> “some people have been wrong before” is not a reason to think you know better than the authors of an upcoming Nature article based on a few layperson-targeted paragraphs summarizing the paper from a very high level.
Nor is "this paper is going to appear in Nature" a reason not to wonder whether there might be something that the authors don't know. The whole point of science is that anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it. You can point out the flaws in giantg2's argument https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47995899, but neither the venue of the paper, nor the fact that the argument is directed at laypeople in a forum frequented by laypeople, seems to me inherently to indicate such flaws.
> The whole point of science is that anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it.
That's a misinterpretation:
> anyone can
(Of course nothing stops them, but I don't think that's your point.)
> anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it.
Science is specifically not the wisdom of the crowds - that is pre-scientific. It is the wisdom of emprical facts, which are usually so complex and voluminous that it takes great expertise to understand and interpret them. Science is not democratic - your opinion is worthless and does not deserve consideration unless you can demonstrate otherwise.
You don't have to be in the priesthood, but it's tough to have the expertise otherwise, and then tough to stay outside the priesthood.
"'In matters of science,' Galileo wrote, 'the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person.'" ("In questioni di scienza L'autorità di mille non vale l'umile ragionare di un singolo." The source was not able to verfy its provenance, however.)
HN is democratic, however.