As an ex-scientist, I'd add one more contention: the cranks. They take way too much time. Limiting the site to active researchers (at least for posting) would help, but even that wouldn't be enough. Not willing to name names in public, but every university has a That Guy. Sometimes - often, in fact - they've done truly revolutionary work in the past, but for whatever reason they've now lost it.
So much as HN common sentiment goes against this, it would need to be heavily moderated and have a reasonably high credentialist (qualifications or published work, preferably both) entry barrier. The FT's "Long Room" forum is a good model. Life is too short for anything else.
Probably just me being an idiot, but if AskScience were separated from Reddit, I'd join to contribute questions and basic answers. Duplicate questions aside, I think it's awesome and should be a definite bookmark for anyone curious about our world. Rest of Reddit is pretty trashy though.
I actually went through and removed the reddit homepage and most of the other default reddit stuff from my account, so now it just shows AskScience and a few other niche areas. It's awesome.
Tenured college professors often become cranks? I thought crankhood was reserved to those who had not achieved a legitimate doctorate.
What about string theory? It seems a specialty designed for cranks: you can't do experiments, it's "a piece of 21st-century physics that had fallen by accident into the 20th century." and that, as the joke states, requires 22nd-century mathematics to solve. Are string theorists cranks?
Arguably yes, though in practice they tend to lack numerous qualities cranks have.
"you can't do experiments"
That's really the one issue, and speaking as an experimentalist it is a big one.
Proponents of string theory generally tend to be quite reasonable in discussion however (recognizing the experimental verification issues for example), and don't practice the many logical fallacies and whatnot that cranks seem to love. You don't hear them arguing about how "big [somebody]" is keeping them down for example.
And yeah, once someone reaches tenure they pretty much have full reign, including being able to be a crank. There isn't all that much people can do about it at that point. Being formerly sensible isn't fullproof protection against crank-ism, some people just... snap (or move on to other topics they were never scientific about in the first place).
So much as HN common sentiment goes against this, it would need to be heavily moderated and have a reasonably high credentialist (qualifications or published work, preferably both) entry barrier. The FT's "Long Room" forum is a good model. Life is too short for anything else.