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

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#WEIRD_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEI...