[nitrogen]

It's not an argument from authority, just a statement of the implied Bayesian priors. One who gives greater weight to scientific papers than to religious pronouncements is entirely rational in doing so. That is the entire well-argued thesis of the Relativity of Wrong essay we are discussing.

[RodericDay]

Unthinking faith in "the institution of science", particularly the denial that it can be co-opted for certain policy goals, and influenced by funding, and lack the foresight to control for important environmental variables, has and will continue to lead into stuff like eugenics, craniology, and austerity.

I'm still reeling from "Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results"- smh.

[nitrogen]

Nobody used the words "unthinking" or "faith", or anything remotely resembling them. Nobody said it was ideal to be uncritical of scientific results, only that it was rational. Rationality is not binary, at least as it appears to be used in a charitable interpretation of the commenter's position. It can be more rational to be uncritical of scientific results (which we can define for the sake of argument any way we like, but probably involving peer review and replication) than to be uncritical of unscientific pronouncements.

Given the available time and energy (or lack thereof) for most of us to examine every scientific result in detail, it can even be more rational (as in best allocation of personal resources) to accept some scientific results uncritically than to study them in detail. I'll note that I would argue for tentative acceptance, with growing confidence over time myself, but the original statement isn't wrong. It's just being interpreted through different vocabularies.

P.S. This next part is not a response to you specifically, just a general comment. I'm really disappointed by the polarizing tone of this thread, the uncharitable readings of others comments, the implications of guilt by association, and the emotionally motivated downvote brigades. HN used to be better; we've discussed this essay before and it wasn't nearly so bad. So I'm disappointed, and I'm disappointed in myself for participating, but feel I must because of how much I like the essay and how important it is for people to understand the concept of the relative wrongness of science.

[voronoff]

He's right. It's an low cost way to be mostly right. There are much worse tradeoffs to be made.

Assuming that science news corresponds to scientific results will get one in trouble though.