> Flagging exists for a reason, doesn't it?
Yes, but in my mind that reason is to call the moderator's attention to an article and force a conscious decision. It's not to automatically allow some tiny percentage of participants to decide what the majority are allowed to read. Probably most of the time, the flaggers are right, discussion would be unproductive, and the article should be removed.
But some of the time, some of the flaggers are ideologically driven to prevent discussion that will damage their ideology. The moderator's goal should be to distinguish these cases. Making it tricky, it's not always a binary whether an article is worthy of discussion or not. Sometimes a good discussion can be created if and only if the moderator has time to spare on guiding the discussion, and sometimes the same article is flagged for different reasons.
A good discussion on a bad article is a great outcome, and bad discussion on a good article is a poor outcome. The "illusory truth effect" is a danger, but failing to properly challenge a false narrative is a danger too. I feel like Dan usually does a good job of trying to weigh these factors, based on the amount of time he is willing to spend babysitting the thread to avoid the worst outcomes, and based on his intuition on what sort of discussion will result.