That he offered up the word "apparently", even with strong evidence of proof shows that he's being an objective reporter and a good scientist. I'm disheartened that this would earn somebody ridicule here.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not data. Simply reporting an anecdote makes you neither a scientist nor a journalist, no matter how strongly the anecdote supports your feelings on some matter. In the end, this is about his feelings on captchas. He hasn't made the case that a better trade-off between fighting spam and a higher conversion is possible; he has only suggested something based on an anecdote. As others immediately questioned: what happened to spam levels? 'Apparently' is not good enough when dealing with that serious problem.
That he offered up the word "apparently", even with strong evidence of proof shows that he's being an objective reporter and a good scientist. I'm disheartened that this would earn somebody ridicule here.