[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Medical professionals have a history of not necessarily having complete understanding of the maths they use in their work. Classic example of a nutritionist 'inventing' the trapezoid rule for calculating area under a curve, and then naming it after herself. And then many many other medical people unironically using said method and citing her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai%27s_model

[mmooss]

> Medical professionals have a history of not necessarily having complete understanding of the maths

HN commenters have a far greater history of that.

Also, researchers trained for years and invested a long time on this work; the HN commenter probably invested a minuted or two.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

> HN commenters have a far greater history of that.

It may very well be true, it is also true that HN commenters can be quite good at spotting math errors. The broader point being that people make mistakes sometimes or even that people sometimes don't have the same knowledge and information as others.

> researchers trained for years and invested a long time on this work; the HN commenter probably invested a minuted or two

Or it can also be postulated that the researchers were highly focused on the aspect of the work they were trained and interested in and may have lacked focus on the auxiliary fields. And that the HN commenter, while only spending a few minutes on this, was knowledgeable about the auxiliary field and immediately spotted a potential issue.

This is actually great and why its good to get papers published and read by a wide audience, because nobody can be good at everything.

[mmooss]

> it is also true that HN commenters can be quite good at spotting math errors

They can be quite good at making that claim, which is cheap. And others like to rally around it - just like the comments rejecting most OPs that make their way to the top.

I'd need to see evidence that the claims are actually valid. Most similar HN take-downs, for fields I have knowledge of, are pretty poor.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

> I'd need to see evidence that the claims are actually valid.

This would indeed be best, no argument here. But this comment thread was more about whether, without evidence, that automatically dismissing a comment because it was on HN or automatically accepting a claim because it was from 'stanford researchers' was ok.

[mmooss]

I wouldn't automatically accept the researcher's claim, but for a HN quick-take critique the burden of establishing legitimacy is on the commenter.

[bbor]

A) these aren’t “medical people”, they’re neuroscientists and psychologists. Comparing them to a nutritionist seems especially cruel!

B) “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.

[JadeNB]

> “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.

[mmooss]

> 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.

[JadeNB]

Your reading of my comment seems perfectly charitable, but it also seems to find more in my comment than what I said.

> > 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.

I did not say that science is democratic, nor that the validity of a scientific fact is determined by the crowds, but rather that anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation. 'Can' is perhaps too strong a word; to do this is a skill that usually requires considerable background and training.

Here I think that one must distinguish between the sociology of science and the ideal of science. In the sociology of science, reputation matters, authority is often deferred to, and an amateur will have a tough time getting a serious hearing. That is the fact of imperfect human practice.

But the ideal of science is that everyone's idea does matter, or, if you like (though I find it pessimistic), that everyone's ideas don't matter. The ideas of the most untrained novice have exactly as much, or as little, scientific weight as those of the most expert, practiced, and credentialed scientist. This is distinct from the sociological weight of an idea: the scientific community is more likely to listen to the expert, practiced, and credentialed scientist than to the novice. But the quality of a scientific idea is intrinsic to the idea, not to who has it.

[mmooss]

I generally agree, though I think calling it the "ideal of science" goes too far. It's more the ideal of democracy.

> imperfect human practice

Whether human social habits affect it or not (I agree they probably do), it would be impossible to spend time examining every amateur idea. And if you see the quality of many amateur ideas - even in a relatively sophisticated population like HN - the payoff gets worse.

[zipy124]

Nature communications, not Nature. There is quite the large difference between them (and neither is neccessarily a sign of quality, but good ability to market well to an editor).

For the record I have published in Nature Communications (and not Nature) and therefore know a little bit about what it takes to publish papers there.