Hmmm ... that is not my experience of it. My experience is that the actual experts' comments are half-way down the page, and in fields I do know about, most of

Hmmm ... that is not my experience of it. My experience is that the actual experts' comments are half-way down the page, and in fields I do know about, most of the comments range from amateurish to BS. The omnipresent take-down comments are disputed by the experts, usually. Many of them follow the same formulaic 'take-down' patterns that reflect amateurism and ignorance trying to look smart, such as railing against sample sizes, etc. Also, your comment is a baseless claim - like the strawperson journalists you rail against - that HN commenters are more informed than the authors. I expect that very few HN commenters are as informed.