[yters]

When Socratic dialogue is done well, it is pretty helpful. When I read some article, I have questions in my head as the author makes her points. If the author is good enough, they can anticipate the reader's questions and write directly to the internal dialogue occurring in my head.

Plato merely makes this process explicit in his Socratic dialogues.

So, the existence of poorly thought out or agenda driven dialogues do not in themselves show the method is a bad one, just like bad musicians do not discredit music as a whole.