[hntrader]

  "suggest an effort to misrepresent at the very least UC Berkeley's position."

This is a non-sequitur.

The decision to keep the identity of the contact anonymous and the presence of a dead link (when a slightly redacted version of the full conversation is still available) doesn't automatically suggest that they're trying to misrepresent UC Berkeley. What an unjustified stretch.

[a_throwaway_6]

You don't see any problem with someone selectively quoting from what they claim is "UC Berkeley's official position", while not pointing to an actual source of that "official position" in UC Berkeley itself, or the entire conversation?

How are we to know that Yngve Hoiseth did not make up the entire conversation, or that they didn't simply choose the passages of the email exchange that support their view, only?

If this is an "official" exchange, why the lack of transparency?

The lack of transparency "suggests an effort to misrpresent".

[hntrader]

It ideally should've been made clear that the veracity is unconfirmed, but aren't there more charitable interpretations for why it wasn't?

[a_throwaway_6]

I could perhaps see a charitable interpretation if the author of the blog post (Guzey) did not accuse the author of the book (Walker) of "deliberate data manipulation", gave the opportunity to the target of the accusation to explain himself, did not misrepresent himself as a "researcher" (pointing to his blog posts as examples of his "research"), did not link to a friend's blog post for "UC Berkeley’s official response", etc, etc.

The author of the blog post is not leaving a lot of room for charitable interpretations.

But in any case, what charitable interpretation do you propose?