13 years old is old enough to take a dose of reality. Science isn't about people's feelings.
I can think of more than a handful of science fair projects that other kids have done, with incorrect results, that win the grade school science fair due to judges who have zero qualification. That multiple major tech news sites picked this up goes a long way in saying what the qualifications are of those who run those sites.
As for the story itself, I know nothing about solar power and little about electrical circuits. However, when I saw the picture of the thing I couldn't help but laughing.
This wasn't only a "scientific piece" -- his stated reason for writing the post was to make a comment on the MSM -- and certainly it wasn't targeted only at scientific readers.
Anyone (like me) who read the commentary about the media, and mostly skimmed over the exhaustive detail on why the experiment was broken, was reading primarily an opinion piece, and certainly tone matters in that context.
I don't agree that tone "only matters for rhetorical persuasion" in the first place (or perhaps I disagree with the idea that rhetorical persuasion isn't always playing a role in scientific writing) -- but that's a larger discussion.
One will have a difficult time being published in scientific journals if the tone is off. The paper has to make it through a series of editors and reviewers.
The thing about science is all of those working in the field are people. And tone matters when working with people.
I can think of more than a handful of science fair projects that other kids have done, with incorrect results, that win the grade school science fair due to judges who have zero qualification. That multiple major tech news sites picked this up goes a long way in saying what the qualifications are of those who run those sites.
As for the story itself, I know nothing about solar power and little about electrical circuits. However, when I saw the picture of the thing I couldn't help but laughing.