[dekhn]

he didn't deny avogadro's number so much as say that its definition was somewhat arbitrary.

IIRC he made the comment before the modern redefinition of SI units. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_revision_of_the_SI#Mass_a... for more details about the ongoing issues associated with absolute numeric counts of elements and their association with mass.

[churchturing]

this is useful context, thanks. would edit my prior comment but it is no longer editable. after some more research it seems his comments on the matter were reasonable