> i literally selected "SARS-CoV-1 still have a strong immune response almost 20" from OP's questioning comment, right clicked, selected "Search Google for..." and the same article was the first result.
I don't know why you think that's obvious. In fact, I wouldn't have expected that query to yield anything relevant, so I wouldn't have even thought to try it. That's what "knows what to search for" means, it doesn't strictly mean "coming up with obscure jargon keywords".
I have to agree with the previous poster, quite often citation needed is being used as a passive aggressive form of "countering" an argument (I have to admit to having used it myself). And if, like in this case, the study (which was what the poster claimed existed) comes up as one of the first results in a google search, I find "citation needed" either to be disingenuous or lazy. Just as a test I searched for "SARS-COV-1 immunity" and got quite a few relevant references as first results as well (even though not the exact study mentioned above).
This is HN, so I think we can expect people know how to search google.
Oh I definitely agree that "citation please" is rampant as a way to tire out your "opponent", I just think that it's usually in good faith on HN, or at least in this instance.
My demonstration was to prove that you don't even need to know what to search for. I literally took the words he typed into a comment box and put them into a search engine instead. And that was WITHOUT trying to massage it to get better results.
I don't know why you think that's obvious. In fact, I wouldn't have expected that query to yield anything relevant, so I wouldn't have even thought to try it. That's what "knows what to search for" means, it doesn't strictly mean "coming up with obscure jargon keywords".