[safety1st]

So the website also publishes right wing propaganda. Does that invalidate the claims in the article he linked? Did you read the article before formulating your opinion?

This is basic critical thinking, you don't have to be as shallow as many readers of that website probably are, you're just choosing to be.

[mapt]

If somebody writes for you a long piece featuring many pages of text and references, quoting lawsuits and making numerous reasonable-seeming inferences throughout...

The opportunity they have to lie to somebody who is unfamiliar with the subject is immense. Falsehood could be hiding in any of a thousand places, and it could easily require you to hire a team of experts for weeks to find it and conclusively debunk it, line by line. It may well require decompiling what is functionally or literally the source code behind the piece to dismiss one's suspicions. "Basic critical thinking" is not trivial against a determined adversary.

Whether to take the claims within on face value depends on your purpose and on what you know of the writer. In this case, it is very easy to become quite familiar with this motivation and ethics of the writer in under a minute by clicking around the website, and come to the reasonable conclusion that this is a place that generally attempts to deceive their reader to secure material gain for their patrons & movement, and there are likely deliberate lies somewhere in the body of the piece. You don't even need to read the body.

[rsynnott]

In general, if someone cites a wacky propaganda website as evidence for something, I'm going to assume that they're doing this because there's no proper evidence. I suppose occasionally this isn't the case, and they've just made a bizarre choice on what to link, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Indeed, the real story would appear to be rather more nuanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Motor_Corp._v._Consumer....

[emsixteen]

Are you really wondering why someone is skeptical of an article on a website which is already clearly willing to publish falsehoods?

[headsoup]

Sure it's stupidly sensationalized, but most of those statements listed are true.

[Jerrrry]

All of those are objectively true.

Please list one of those that are false, so you can be educated.

[eesmith]

> that gets little media attention

It did not get little media attention. Indeed, the lawsuit got rather a lot.

> AIM has submitted an amicus brief in the case, arguing that Suzuki should be allowed to present its evidence to a jury. It is hard to understand how any judge could honestly rule that the evidence in this case does not prove that the defendant knew that its claim that the Samurai “rolled over easily” was false.

The source definitely has a dog in this hunt.

Who are we to believe, a partisan in the lawsuit, or the trial judge? And why?

It's very likely that AIM's goal is to present the best facts in their argument, and ignore or minimize other factors. Or as CU put it (quoting https://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19970422/pres... ): "First it was the cigarette makers, now it's an automobile manufacturer. Different industries, same desperate tactics. Throw up a smoke screen, hurl ludicrous charges, and falsely claim (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that their product is safe -- all to avoid liability for defective and dangerous products." ...

> "We welcome and invite NHTSA to evaluate our honesty and integrity. Courts have done so and found unanimously that our methodology was beyond reproach. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York -- one of the nation's most highly respected courts -- has said that our work 'exemplifies the very highest order of responsible journalism.'"" ...

> "On the other hand, Dr. Pittle said, in a decision that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review, a Federal Court of Appeals stated that Suzuki and its attorneys "engaged in an unrelenting campaign to obfuscate the truth."

> "The truth that was revealed despite Suzuki's cover-up is that Suzuki knew -- prior to first selling the car in the U.S. -- that the vehicle had a 'rollover problem' and that General Motors refused to sell the car because its evaluation demonstrated the danger of rollover," Dr. Pittle said.

Do you really expect HN readers to act like trial court judges and decide which of these two partisans are correct, and dig through decades old material to offer a point-by-point rebuttal?

If the evidence is so clear-cut, why did Suzuki and CU end up with a rather mundane settlement?

[groby_b]

Basic critical thinking is "if the publication lies in every other article, the expected value of this one additional article is close to zero".

Critical thinking does not require you to carefully parse every bit of garbage on the planet.