It's also clear that before learning of this event, we had 0% knowledge of the situation.

Between 0 and where we are now with both sides expressing their point of view to some degree, people on HN began making up their mind in the absence of complete information. There is no requirement or urgency that we come to some inconsequential conclusion of our own.

My bias is that it seems difficult to obtain the position the researcher held at Google. How can I be willing to believe the engineer has the ability to navigate the subject matter and its application without being able to navigate this employment scenario. It feels as though I am required to accept the engineers brilliance while calling them dumb at the same time. That feels like a larger handwave than considering the known actions of Google and questioning the few assertions they are willing, but not required truthfully or untruthfully to provide.