Citing papers doesn’t make an opinion piece “scientific” or unpolitical. It just means the author did enough research to prop their opinion up. It’s a particular failing of self described rationalists that seeing citations means the goal was objective truth rather than supporting a pre-existing bias or opinion. Particularly when dealing with papers in harder to study fields that have been at the centre of the replication crisis.

As with the SRE who tried to play epidemiologist the other day it pays to be skeptical about the evidence and opinions presented even if they are delivered with citations and in an academic tone. Especially when both are playing far outside their fields of expertise.

I don't care what his pre-existing biases were, and that's not really the point. He wrote a paper and supported it with facts and sources. If you disagree with something, then dispute the facts/sources.

I haven't seen a single comment in this post disagreeing with the memo that actually critiques any specific points in the memo. Every single criticism I've seen is more along the lines of "but he was being sexist". Ok, can't argue with that I guess.

If you don’t care about the context the memo was written in you are just engaging in what I described. Essentially trying to veneer your preconceptions with the appearance of “science” and attempting to shift the burden of proof.