zlacker

    >  ...dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective...

"Data" absolutely can be malleable or selective, it all depends on how the argument is constructed and is easily prone to abuse.

The points she makes are rock-solid. That said, I still do enjoy HN immensely and can tolerate the warts and libertarians.

>>crispy+(OP)
Indeed so, but the scientific process (in the general, Enlightenment sense) is more robust and abuse / fault -tolerant than anything else we've come up with.

Reproducibility crises or statistical hacking news articles are evidence of success. In a less-introspective system, those self-reevaluations didn't even happen!

Viz, the 300+ years it took for a shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric consensus.