"I'm not sure why the Times would print a recommendation of a practice that's strongly discouraged by doctors."

"Individuals discovering this for themselves, or inheriting this method from a parent, is one thing. Hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously receiving encouragement through the media for something that doctors consider dangerous is another thing entirely."

That's a comment on "The Best Way to Clean Your Ears: With a Spoon/Doctors strongly discourage people from scraping inside their ears. But knowing better and doing it anyway is part of what makes us human" (NYT).

I think the answer to the question why the NYT would print this can be seen in what I'm boldfacing:

[W]hat our teachers said didn’t reflect the practices of my Chinese grandmother, who had immigrated to the United States and moved into our house to help care for me and my siblings while my parents worked. Waipo, as we called her, would cozily tuck our heads into her capacious lap to clean our ears. Her grooming introduced me to the ear spoon — a long-handled curette, also known as an ear pick, ear picker or ear scoop, that is a common implement in Asian households. Traditional ear spoons can be made of silver, brass, plastic, bamboo or another smooth, sturdy material; the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco owns an ornate jade hair ornament from the Qing dynasty that doubles as an ear spoon..... Waipo had other rituals that I knew our white neighbors might find strange or unusual.... Otolaryngologists strongly discourage people from scraping inside their ears... Yet it also feels virtuous and productive, akin to what I’ve experienced at Korean baths, where the ajummas scrub me hard enough to slough off rolls of dead skin....

It's sort of like the way there was a Black Lives Matter exception to the coronavirus lockdown last summer. There are these special exceptions to the general expert scientific advice. If you're not within the racially defined exception to science,  you can lose your access to social media for spreading health advice that conflicts with the experts' position. But wrap it in racial trappings, and elite media will amplify your message!