The problem is that saying "Professor Lord Voldemort is a liar and a fraud" puts an end to scientific discussion and forces people to assume nakedly partisan positions. Publicly at least, we have to assume good faith in our counterparts, even if we know in our hearts that they're self-inflated gasbags.
The tactics I and the original article were describing allow Lord Voldemort to clothe any assertion he likes in the robes of science. The root of this problem is a broken incentive system for publication. We're required to publish a lot to show productivity, and we're trained to put in lots of citations to back up our work. This creates an unmanageable avalanche of worthless papers and makes it easy to build a false trail of scammy citations.
Compare this to the situation 50 years ago, before publication inflation had set in. John Nash wrote a 30 page dissertation, and cited two works at the end of it. Simon's classic "Behavioral Model of Rational Choice" cited 5 works. The entire Cowles commission report on Activity Analysis devoted only 4.5 of its 418 pages to citations, and that included a detailed lit review in its introduction. Nothing makes it to press these days without five to ten times as many citations.
The tactics I and the original article were describing allow Lord Voldemort to clothe any assertion he likes in the robes of science. The root of this problem is a broken incentive system for publication. We're required to publish a lot to show productivity, and we're trained to put in lots of citations to back up our work. This creates an unmanageable avalanche of worthless papers and makes it easy to build a false trail of scammy citations.
Compare this to the situation 50 years ago, before publication inflation had set in. John Nash wrote a 30 page dissertation, and cited two works at the end of it. Simon's classic "Behavioral Model of Rational Choice" cited 5 works. The entire Cowles commission report on Activity Analysis devoted only 4.5 of its 418 pages to citations, and that included a detailed lit review in its introduction. Nothing makes it to press these days without five to ten times as many citations.