Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? It's not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It "will now be investigated in more detail" to try and disprove it. That's bog standard scientific work. What's hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamlia…
Science is a process. HN isn't anti-science. The scientific establishment is a group of people in various organizational structures and alliances. I'm part of that establishment, and I can say that it lies, exaggerates, and has become increasingly untrustworthy in the past decade or two: - The easiest way to get ahead in the scientific establishment is to fabricate politically-motivated results. - Competition is inte…
If I haven't said that in my comment, would you say I'm obliged to reply to your comment and explain why I'm not, in fact, "doing it wrong"?
Do you agree that when having a conversation one should reply to what one's interlocutor has actually said, and not what one thinks has been said?
>> Science isn't about authority or expertise. It's about evidence, critical thinking, and the scientific process.
I disagree. "Science" means knowledge. What we call science is a process, like you say, but it is the process of accumulating and organising the collective knowledge of our civilisation. "Evidence, critical thinking and the scientific process" are not the essence of science, but tools to acquire knowledge, and this knowledge is the essence of science.
The people who have deep knowledge of a subject of scientific inquiry, we call "experts". At least I do and that's what I mean by "expert" in my comment above. To become an expert -to acquire deep knowledge in a subject- takes long years of study and familiarity with the work of other experts. "Evidence, critical thinking, and the scientific process" don't make anyone an expert. Hard work and applying oneself to the task of learning is what does.
Yet, what I see on HN, time and again, is that it is the opinions of non-experts that are supported by the majority of users. I say that because every time I see a post like the one above, where some researchers announce the results of their work, someone will always, always, jump in and dismiss the work of the researchers, and that someone usually has no idea what they're talking about, has spent a minimal amount of time thinking about or learning about what they're talking about, and their comment will rise to the top of the conversation, like a flag waving in the wind proclaiming "we do not care what you know, we can do better with a quick google and some bungled logic". That such comments rise to the top of conversations means that they are the ones most other users agree with.
This, the preponderance of inexpert opinion found as the first comment in posts about researchers' work, dismissing the researchers' work and supported by a majority of HN readers, is what I think of as "anti-science".