That was actually a pretty rude "reply"... What dingus said is entirely correct. Yes, we should take an author's background and possible external motivations into account. But if the contents of a piece are factually correct, they ought to be treated as such.
edit: sorry, that was harsh, you didn't deserve that. To provide context: that's not the first time that person has been negative in comments and posts I've been in. In this comment thread, I fully acknowledged that it is possible to influence voting results, to influence behavior, and that this is a scientifically tested phenomenon. What I questioned is 1) why this paper was focusing on Google specifically and 2) the poor quality of the paper itself. So I did research first on the author, then did research on the peer review process of the site the paper was hosted on, and found that the author of the paper was biased, and there was no way to verify the validity of the paper. The paper was also badly presented. I then did further research, and found that the author of this badly presented paper has had a history of bad blood with Google, and therefore the way this paper was phrased just didn't sit right with me. If the paper had been about search engines in general, and hadn't included Google in the title, while I still would've been dismayed by the poor presentation and scientific flaws, I wouldn't have questioned it so heavily. So then some user comes along, making the jump to conclusions assumption that I was dismissing one of the premises of the linked paper: that influencing voting behavior by a search engine is possible. Which I never had done. I.e.: I said things, someone made generalized assumptions about the things I'd said, turned it into absolutism, and was acting like I was wrong, which made no sense. And now I give up trying to have a rational conversation with anyone else in this thread. Have a lovely day.
Not sure if that was directed at me or someone else. If at me: please tell me where in this comment thread I said that it's not possible for a search engine to skew data in order to influence election results. If it was not directed at me: my apologies.
