Apologies, I assumed it would be clear from the other comments. When I posted this the top comment was a very visibly negative take on the paper. Similarly, Google must have considered this paper to be sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse because their actions around the release of this paper lead to the termination of a couple authors and a PR snafu.
Thanks for explaining. FWIW, I don't think your last sentence is a fair assessment of what happened at all. Pointing out major deficiencies in a paper is not the same thing as saying it's "sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse", and, having closely followed the news when this all went down, it's clear that it's what happened in the aftermath of this paper that led to the terminations - it's not like Google said "this paper is so bad, you're fired".
I can’t speak to the aftermath but even interfering in the publication of the paper is pretty dramatic. If Google had let it go through and not said anything, or at worst published a milquetoast response saying they disagree but respect the discourse, I don’t think the paper would have had half the attention. If your scientists publish a paper that is not even wrong, do you ask them to retract it? Shouldn’t the response from the larger academic community be enough?
