If his supervisor were an outlier, I could see your point. But a big purpose behind his blog post is to highlight how common this is.
I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vague as to be impossible to defend.
It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations.
Interesting seeing this response after you just posted:
>If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself
Was this a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of your point? Or is vague criticism only unacceptable in academia?
I wanted to claim that you shouldn't make vague criticism. I immediately expected that people would respond as if my claim was that you shouldn't criticize. And sure enough, that's what the post I responded to did.
Me: "You shouldn't make vague criticism"
Response: "OMG you're saying university professors are above criticism."
Do you think I'm being vague here? :-)
Criticizing in a vague way is precisely appropriate in a situation where you don't want to make the criticism specific to a single circumstance but are instead trying to make a broader point about a systemic issue.
Do you also accept the "other side" of the argument that the author of the blog post could be wrong?
Perhaps, but only the author can confirm this.
I don't see where they made this claim, or a reference to a 'scientific standard'. Can you please point to it?
Feel free to have whatever preference you want, but understand that others may have different preferences from yours and they may have good reasons for those preferences that you simply are not aware of instead of assuming the worst of them.
>What you quoted doesn't say that either.
It absolutely does and the fact that you don't realize that is a good indication you are not discussing this matter in good faith so I thank you for choosing to cease discussing this any further.
If they don't, then it's completely unconvincing because it doesn't actually provide any new information.
So if the goal is to gripe to other people who "get it", then sure, vague criticisms are great.
If the goal is to convince people that something is an issue, then all vague criticisms do is establish what your opinion is; they fail to actually provide information that could (justifiably) convince anyone.
At best, they can convince someone to be interested enough to look into it on their own.
And my issue wasn't about whether it's OK or not to criticize, nor about the level of detail, but whether his manner of criticism was unprofessional. It was not. You can argue that it's not effective, but there's nothing unprofessional about it.
And what is that, exactly? That the author is smart and/or right and that everyone around him is wrong? Maybe, but it's not a particularly valuable observation.