I disagree; mostly because of this last part.

> you need to explicitly ask that question.

This last part feels like a demand and is too forceful. Suggestion is more persuasive then demands. I agree with you the comment you replied too is a little too sugarcoated for my taste, but the basic structure seems good, suggesting an authoritative source to back up your concern is a good idea. Especially when you are commenting on something (the data scientist may not have known about her LGBT work) outside your field to someone who is in the field (making a survey).

With that said, I get like this too when I am deep in coding. This may not be an issue for technical topics where it can be proved that x would cause a crash. But, I would handle this differently for non-tech issues that are subjective.

But... the data scientist should have been used to this at a company full of programmers. Maybe she was the first to actually comment on the content of the work.

Still, the data scientist overreacted and should have handled it better. Assuming this is more or less the details we need to know.

> I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate.

Keep in mind OP said she got hundreds of comments on her earlier work from all over the company. Maybe instead the female data scientist was very defensive because she got similar treatment in the past.