[sigbottle]

When I disagree with the data: I will nitpick every last detail of methodology, any cross-corroboration is an anecdote, suddenly I demand a-priori levels of justification. All science is flawed anyways, it's not like mathematics, you can't get absolute certainty, so why bother? You're always going to be making base assumptions that can be challenged, you're necessarily going to abstract out the territory, the map is flawed.

When I agree with the data: I will boast about the victories of science and empiricism, we found the perfect set of natural abstractions that are necessary and sufficient to map out the territory that carve at the joints of the problem, any concern about assumptions is rebutted with generic "Well, we're just pragmatists; we're not perfect, but clearly we're converging on the right direction! You're clearly someone who just wants to nitpick and not get any work done."

My experience with certain hackernews commenters in a nutshell.