> Go find any popular article that makes factual claims. Then, read comments about it on some high-quality forum. Almost always, you will see comments that are

> Go find any popular article that makes factual claims. Then, read comments about it on some high-quality forum. Almost always, you will see comments that are deeply problematic for the original thesis. > How much should these comments decrease your confidence in the original article? I claim: Not much, at least on average. > First, if everything you read has devastating criticisms, you should expect them to exist. Without explicitly commenting on the world in which we live, it seems to me that all the hypotheses are consistent with a world of low-quality discourse, in which many of the factual claims we encounter in popular articles are wrong (in possibly minor, but possibly major, ways). You should always evaluate your sources, to be sure—and the value of an anonymous comment on even a high-quality forum is fairly low—but a factual refutation of a factual claim should, I think, be given very high weight, even if most such claims have such refutations. (The author seems further on to be pointing out perhaps the futility of refuting a 'headline point' when the headline will be fleshed out in the body. With that I can more easily agree. Of course, as is the way of such things, I was more eager to make my slightly contrary point than to finish reading the essay.)