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Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Realize the article is written by Andy Pasztor. If there is ever a negative SpaceX angle, he'll find it.

I'm not disputing the factual content of the article, nor do I have reason to believe he's paid off to do hit pieces, but it's important to realize he almost constantly has a chip on his shoulder with respect to SpaceX.

Another thing to keep in mind: SpaceX produces more liquid rocket engines than any other domestic provider by a VERY large margin.

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It's good to have someone who's skeptical and willing to travel beyond the spacex fever the tech press is infected with to report on things with a critical eye. This seems like a totally valid article, and as long as the facts are correct as reported it doesn't really matter who the author is.

Agreed - the criticisms here are pure ad hominem. If there is a problem with SpaceX components, then that is surely more important and relevant than who wrote the article publicising it.

Pointing out an author's bias isn't fallacious. Using that bias to disregard facts is.

Except that the journalistic track record of an author is additional information.

Imagine a person who you know to have a large bias against something. Now imagine they tell you a narrative about that thing. You, being a reasonable person, would use greater scrutiny about that narrative than someone who you know to be uninterested or even marginally interested in the subject.

I agree that the public has an interest in finding out about issues in the rockets its government purchases. The above commenter isn't saying "disregard, it's the anti-SpaceX guy!" It's just more information. Gathering information has a cost; and we can't all fully research every opinion.

I didn't downvote you; it's a reasonable argument to make, and I don't mind giving the counter-opinion in the least.

Generally speaking, not wrt this article, I want to point out that usually the definition of bias is that it's unreasonable—if the concerns are reasonable, then it's not bias. So you can't look at someone, see that they write negative articles, and conclude bias. That's not enough information: you still ought to establish whether they got it wrong (especially in an obvious or lazy way), and only then conclude they are biased. If someone keeps writing negative/positive articles, and you don't know if they're right, then you also don't know if they're biased or not.

Since I don't see anybody pointing out what's obviously wrong with these concerns, I feel safe to assume it's not biased. Figuring out if an argument is biased is at least as hard as examining the argument on merits, and usually much harder. So I think that the commenters were right to call out the ad hominem.

Absolutely. The only time a person's bias matters is with an opinion piece. If supported facts are laid out, who cares about the author's opinions?

Because any article like this is filled with non-neutral ways of wording statements.

Andy's information is usually well-sourced. I'm not saying to disregard the objective information in his articles, only be wary of his spin on those facts. There ARE people in the space journalism field that are noted for their professionalism and neutrality. Jeff Foust, for instance, is one of them. Andy P is definitely not.

You can write an article claiming almost anything if you include supporting facts and deliberately ignore dissenting facts. The world is full of noisy data.

You can dismiss any evidence you want by pointing out unspecified dissenting facts that might exist, so you gotta be quite specific. That's why assessing things on merit is right, but pointing out that all data is noisy is not the way to go: it's uninformative.

Pointing out that data is noisy as a counterargument to an article is uninformative. Pointing out that data is noisy to encourage critical thinking and make people wary of manipulation is not uninformative.

I don't know if this is obviously wrong with these concerns but...

“we have qualified our engines to be robust” to such cracks but are “modifying the design to avoid them altogether.” The pending changes “will be part of the final design” for the Falcon 9, he added, “in partnership with NASA to qualify engines for manned spaceflight.”

In other words this might not have been a meaningful safety issue. I am not qualified to judge robust in that context, but this reads like a one sided hit piece and the writer has demonstrated past bias. EX: bulging backlog is not a neutral statement.

The only thing we can say for sure is it has not been an issue in the last 29 flights, so the actual risk must be greater than 0 and less than ~10%.

PS: I would hope they would take even a specific risk at 0.01% per flight as a serious safety concern. But, again without data we don't know if it was more or less than that.

That's my point: the way figure out if the author is biased is to first answer the somewhat easier question: are the cracks a serious issue or not? I'd much rather have that discussion than the other one. That's also why the ad hominem further up was unjustified.

P.S. hit piece is not exactly neutral on your part either. Bias works both ways, you know.

Hit piece is descriptive. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hit_piece. Do you have a more neutral one For: "A published article or post aiming to sway the public opinion by presenting the false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful."

Also, I am not sure the guy is biased, just that the piece is. He got a strong response form HN for that article which drives readership. Which is why Hit Pices are such a common style they promote readership.

The two synonyms are slam piece and hatchet job, so definitely negative, not neutral or merely descriptive. Plus, the bias is not in the term itself, but in you applying the term to the article.

Of the three Hit piece seems the most descriptive. I can directly say it looks like the article is aiming to sway the public opinion by presenting the false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful.

It's just more words for the same idea.

IMO, Hit Piece like War has negative connotations because of what they depict, not the tone. Hatchet Job on the other hand tacks on the idea it was written that way with malicious intent, which I don't want to imply as it may simply be a tactic to gain more views.

So, I disagree there is bias when simply describing what it's structure of point and counter point suggests. You could replace the content with talk of muffins and the same structure works to exaggerate concerns.

You can still draw a totally wrong image of something by stating certain facts, but leaving other important facts off.

Well said. This smells like a hatchet piece put together by the gray hairs at StratCom who've continued to be incredulous that a private enterprise can put things in orbit and have hoped for SpaceX to fail from the outset.

> incredulous that a private enterprise can put things in orbit

What's with this commonly repeated narrative that SpaceX is the only private company in space? I think the formation of ULA between Boeing and Lockheed was garbage as much as the next person. Just like Boeing buying McDonnell Douglas was garbage. But look at a list of rockets to take something to space and they are all private (ULA, Orbital, and SpaceX).

SpaceX plays the game just like everyone else. They hire the retired generals from the military. They bid on government launches. They use government ranges for launching.

All of the incumbent's R&D was paid for by US taxpayers. Their bloated pricing is a product of not having to compete commercially on cost. SpaceX has to seek business where the opportunities are. They in turn plow their profits back into the business rather than waiting for the next handout.

And what R&D do you think SpaceX is built on? I'll give you a hint: you mentioned it in your comment.

That doesn't explain why ULA has such insane launch costs. It's a classic government fleece job. They've been stealing taxpayer dollars because they could.

SpaceX is charging a fraction of the cost.

ULA has been paying lobbyists and trying to squeeze SpaceX out of bidding. It has been purely due to the hype around SpaceX that they were not successful.

Why the government let Boeing and Lockheed form the ULA is beyond me. The US used to have 3 solid launch providers and went to 1. I'm glad we're back to 2 with SpaceX. We were handing lots of business to Arianespace.

In another article [1], the GAO says that they cannot talk about any information in the report because it is still in preparation and has not been publicly made available, so others cannot even verify the claims of the author. The preliminary report must have been leaked to the author of the WSJ article.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/2/14490946/spacex-rocket-engi...

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