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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

It’s better to say I think the authors should have thought about X rather the author is a moron and incompetent for not doing X. You can still say it by critiquing the actions not the character of the person. Similar rules exist in the Houses of parliament around accusations of lying simply because everyone would decend into that as a method of argument. It’s harder to call people out but still possible in my opinion.

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It doesn't matter to the mods of r/science how politely you put it if you are suggesting that not considering X would have significantly changed the conclusions of "the science."

As an aside, most of the mods are toward the "soft" side of science (biology, medicine, social science), and likely do not understand statistics very well. Papers with glaring issues regularly make it to the top because their conclusions are cool, not because they are truly good/impactful works.

>It’s better to say I think the authors should have thought about X rather the author is a moron and incompetent for not doing X.

It is probably less being a moron or incompetent than having an agenda would be the likely complaint ... depending on the subject matter that is. I suspect this is much more of a problem is social sciences than, say, pure mathematics.

Ok, but that’s not what the rule is saying (be civil, no ad hominem, etc). If that were the case I would have no issue. Maybe that would be a reasonable rule - and it is on many forums.

It’s saying that criticism must “assume competence” - that’s very different - and as a moderator I can twist any kind of criticism into a violation of this rule. And why do I have to assume competence anyway - shouldn’t the work stand on its own merits?

And let’s get something straight - “being a moron” is not equivalent to being incompetent (in an area of expertise). One is just name calling the other is a specific legitimate criticism.

The community is 95% less competent than the researchers so I think this rule is fine.

The same can be said for any community discussing politics, technology, or entertainment. An overwhelming majority of online commenters are ignorant of those fields and the myriad of factors that have to be taken into account by the experts who are making the decisions that are being discussed. So, should comments in those subreddits "assume competence" of legislators, software businesses and TV producers, lest they be deleted?

If you are as competent as the researchers you’re perfectly capable of pointing out the mistakes made in the research without insults like competency or stupidity. As it says in the rules for hacker news:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

That these rules are not enforced by deleting content but the comments largely disappearing from view (based on community voting) is not a hugely different outcome IMO. It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to participate in such a community if you don’t want to. Their space and their rules.

I absolutely agree with you that comments should not explicitly cast doubt on the authors competency, nor insult them or their reasonings. However, that is not the rule we are criticising. The rule is:

> Criticism of published work should assume basic competence

That rule for example would bar a commenter from critiquing the work for not taking into account a confounding factor, or for using a non-representative WEIRD [0] population sample to reach overly broad conclusions. Taking these issues into account can be argued to be "basic competence", but they are too often ignored in many the most headline-worthy social science papers that attract the most upvotes.

[0] western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEI...

That's why I go to the comments, for the 1% of commenter who do know better and can add something. That's why HN is still quite good, there are real experts here commenting on stuff below the line. Imagine if HN ruled that every article posted must be assumed correct - HN as a commentary would have no value for me any more.

The fact that the average community member is a moron doesn't mean that you should delete the posts from the people who are not. I'm sure they get tons of "biology doesn't replicate" posts that should get removed. They also remove posts that are polite, technically correct, and specific, and point out glaring issues in the paper.

I think that posses the credentials to show that are not "morons" can get verified in the subreddit and will not have their comments removed.

That is true, but this happens even to credentialed users who speak on papers outside of their supposed field of expertise, even when their comment is within their area of expertise. If a mathematician points out a math error in a biology or climate science paper, it gets deleted. The mathematician rightly should know more about math than a biologist or a climate scientist, and the comment is still taken down.

Also, you shouldn't need credentials to demonstrate that you know something - the fact that you post something polite and useful should be enough to have your comment not be removed. It is a useful proxy for moderation at scale, though.

> you shouldn't need credentials to demonstrate that you know something - the fact that you post something polite and useful should be enough to have your comment not be removed

The moderators of the subreddit obviously disagree. From the sides I would say it works for them.

It certainly works for the moderators - I agree. Whether it works for the community is another question.

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