> I guess I just want to understand why there is a mistrust for professional scientists even on a site as technologically inclined as HN.
I think you are new to HN. There is a long history of healthy skepticism by the readers here of studies posted in a wide range of fields. Healthy skepticism, or at least, pointing out remarkable and hard-to-believe aspects of a reported study (as I did here), is quite commonplace all over HN.
In fact, if you read any of the nearly hundred other comments in this thread, you will see equal amounts of skepticism, some more verbose, some more terse, than what I expressed. Fortunately, you did not go and criticize those commenters also.
In the case of evolution, I was taught years ago in school that evolution is not a gradual and linear process, and that often very long stretches occur with zero evolutionary action, then a single evolutionary event causes a gigantic leap of changes in a species, a single spike, which then plateaus again for a long time another spike.
I am not an evolutionary scientist of course, but I was leaning on that, and layman's perception of evolution, in my comment.
I'm frustrated to have to point this out. What did you hope to accomplish by criticising my reaction to the article? Are we not all here to comment on our opinions and reactions to the items posted? Just because you do not agree with my particular reaction to the article does not mean you should make such wide assumptions about my own motivations (or those of any other reader you choose to attack in the future).
I think you are new to HN. There is a long history of healthy skepticism by the readers here of studies posted in a wide range of fields. Healthy skepticism, or at least, pointing out remarkable and hard-to-believe aspects of a reported study (as I did here), is quite commonplace all over HN.
In fact, if you read any of the nearly hundred other comments in this thread, you will see equal amounts of skepticism, some more verbose, some more terse, than what I expressed. Fortunately, you did not go and criticize those commenters also.
In the case of evolution, I was taught years ago in school that evolution is not a gradual and linear process, and that often very long stretches occur with zero evolutionary action, then a single evolutionary event causes a gigantic leap of changes in a species, a single spike, which then plateaus again for a long time another spike.
I am not an evolutionary scientist of course, but I was leaning on that, and layman's perception of evolution, in my comment.
I'm frustrated to have to point this out. What did you hope to accomplish by criticising my reaction to the article? Are we not all here to comment on our opinions and reactions to the items posted? Just because you do not agree with my particular reaction to the article does not mean you should make such wide assumptions about my own motivations (or those of any other reader you choose to attack in the future).