No, but when you make claims like those in the title then those peer-reviewed facts make all the difference.

There's a ton of pseudo science and outright bs in the anti-aging scene so some references would definitely help in this case.

Articles that don't make grandiose claims don't need to put their evidence up front. For 'most scientists' in the title read 'most scientists that hold a view contrary to that of the author'.

Some days it just feels like every "scientific" article posted to HN is just someone's opinion with no data, and the only reason they even get upvoted is because people who probably didn't even read the article wanted to argue about it.

It's like citing Bible verses for fundamentalist positivists, so yes.

Never mind that the quality of published research itself varies wildly, or that this requirement creates an intrinsic tunnel-vision bias toward premature convergence at local maxima. If the measure of veracity is citations, then that creates a network effect, etc.

Not saying citations are a bad thing, just that they're not prima facie indicators of truth or rationality.