[Jensson]

> Focusing on the flaws and trying to shoot down everything is just craven recreation.

No, its a valuable job to find flaws because its much easier to fix and work on known flaws than to stumble in the dark.

Removing flaws and problems is one of the easiest ways to add value.

[mmooss]

It's not valuable. People who do this at work are people who have no value to offer so they try to sound smart (and valuable) by finding flaws in someone else's work. All work is limited and flawed - it's easy to find them. Add the common hyperbolic statements on HN dismissing the entire study or whole fields of research, and it's misinformation.

The real significance is that things like sample size, to pick a common example here, is easy to understand in a theoretical way and so people apply it to the actual (not theoretical) practice of real research, which they don't understand the practicalities of, and also they overemphasize it because that's pretty much all they understand.

The first thing they look at in a paper is sample size - and hey, now sometimes they have something to 'contribute'! It's just reinforcing the same misunderstandings in others.

It sucks, a little, to have nothing to contribute, but it's a great opportunity to learn from people who do know.