Is he actually a physicist, as the article says? If so, I don't see that the title is misleading.
I suppose it could say "French physicist loses philosophy doctorate after plagiarism investigation" but it would probably lead to a different sort of confusion.
It’s true in the sense that scientific exploration expands our understanding of the world, which often forces us to re-evaluate our beliefs and adopt new ones, something that is antithetical to small C conservatism, almost by definition. So in that sense, reality does have a “liberal” (perhaps more accurately progressive) bias, the more we learn about it.
There is also quite a lot of history through the ages of science being a partisan issue as new discoveries upended the stories told by the established powers.
So I stand by my comment and it would apply to any political era.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle, which is not what the site is for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what they're battling for or against.
I'm not going to ban your account right now because I noticed at least one comment in your recent history which was on an unrelated topic, but if you'd please fix this, we'd appreciate it. HN is supposed to be for intellectual curiosity, random-access style, not pre-existing agendas, ongoing political battles, or single-purpose accounts.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against.
This is both harsh and untrue. While I've allowed myself to be baited here, I've clearly discussed other topics.
This is (was?) a somewhat new account as well. How big of a buffer should I have before I'm allowed to discuss controversial topics without fearing the ban hammer?
We have no interest in being unfair, and anyone who genuinely wants to use HN as intended should have no trouble getting unbanned.
In this context, the test for whether an account is using HN as intended or not is whether it is primarily using the site for ideological/political/etc. battle. If an account is mostly using HN for the latter, which yours plainly is, then it's not using the site as intended.
I think that answers your question, no? It's not about buffer size, it's about what an account is primarily using HN for. It's supposed to be used for intellectual curiosity in a kind of meandering random walk. It's not supposed to be used for prosecuting fixed agendas, regardless of what the agenda is.
I counted about 20 comments on political topics and 4 on others. That's plainly on the wrong side of the "primarily" test.
If you want to commit to using the site primarily for intellectual curiosity and only secondarily for politics/ideology/etc., we can unban the account.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against.
Edit: Since your account has been on HN a long time and obviously wasn't created for this purpose, I'll add this bit: If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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