Like sibling I'd also like more information on this and can't find anything immediately compelling with a light search. Like this post suggests, obviously there

Like sibling I'd also like more information on this and can't find anything immediately compelling with a light search. Like this post suggests, obviously there's a use to hiding information, sometimes a bad reputation is undeserved or irrelevant to the work, sometimes there are subtle biases in play. The reputation of the author and their behaviour wrt the citations used should be considered, I agree with you that it's important information. Maybe the reviewer of an individual paper shouldn't be considering that though, maybe that should primarily be considered in a second review stage or in the context of meta-reviews? Idk, but the spirit of using passive voice in the context of research makes more sense to me.