That's a fair point, and maybe I'm just demonstrating a personal bias for a particular type of discussion that isn't reflected on Hacker News. However, I didn't try to "correct" the grandparent commenter so much as show that while an acknowledgement of an anecdote is made in good faith, it doesn't take away from the overall impact on the audience. We may not be researchers peer reviewing the work of colleagues here, but we can still strive for a certain level of scientific literacy and decorum in our discussion.
Stated another way - if this were an article about computer science instead of neuroscience, would you expect the overall discussion to be stronger, the same or weaker compared to this discussion in terms of rigor? Furthermore, would you think that rigor was warranted on this forum (these aren't rhetorical questions, I'm curious)? I understand that disciplines like neuroscience allow us to relate with the science a bit (it's tempting to retroactively interpret our experiences with novel research!) but comments offering anecdotes, even with those expressly accounted for, allow biases to be couched in between legitimate data. I certainly think the grandparent comment would be challenged similarly if this was a psychological study with the current concerns about replication.
Stated another way - if this were an article about computer science instead of neuroscience, would you expect the overall discussion to be stronger, the same or weaker compared to this discussion in terms of rigor? Furthermore, would you think that rigor was warranted on this forum (these aren't rhetorical questions, I'm curious)? I understand that disciplines like neuroscience allow us to relate with the science a bit (it's tempting to retroactively interpret our experiences with novel research!) but comments offering anecdotes, even with those expressly accounted for, allow biases to be couched in between legitimate data. I certainly think the grandparent comment would be challenged similarly if this was a psychological study with the current concerns about replication.