> Did you read it? I try to avoid making a habit of commenting on things without reading them, and also of over-quickly assuming that others do so. > This is

> Did you read it? I try to avoid making a habit of commenting on things without reading them, and also of over-quickly assuming that others do so. > This is a lawyers [sic] carefully worded article to avoid being sued [...] Accepting a consensus view is a really shifty way to avoid acknowledging being blatantly wrong. This leads me to question whether you read the article, or simply picked out snippets to support your preconceptions. Let's take some other quotations: > In a detailed review I found that misinterpretations, mistakes and misunderstandings happened at several stages of the reporting and editing process. Cumulatively they produced an article that overstated its case. > The most serious inaccuracy was a claim that WhatsApp had a “backdoor” ^ these look like an acknowledgement to me. Furthermore, to refute your selectively used quotation above: > I am not an expert in this field. For the review I consulted suitably experienced experts other than the 72 who had already declared their view. [...] I found a consensus that [...] The author is accepting the consensus view amongst the experts with whom he spoke, since, as he acknowledges, he is not an expert in the field. This seems to me to be an emminently sensible approach, which most journalists would do well to follow.