One thing this article doesn't address is the pressure that many academics are under in the process of their research, and the 'meta-narrative' of their careers

One thing this article doesn't address is the pressure that many academics are under in the process of their research, and the 'meta-narrative' of their careers writ large. When you are competing for eyeballs, attention, grants, and tenure – when the community you work in is so small and so tightly networked – there can be a ton of pressure to make leaps of logic or narrative in order to paint a picture that resonates within that community. I'm not excusing this behavior, but I understand it. It's the same reason UX designers build dark patterns they know will degrade the experience, it's the same reason we vote along party lines, it's the same reason trends are adopted and movies become mega-blockbusters. In most cases – even in academia – the stakes are low and so it doesn't really matter. But the stakes are much greater when that academic research influences policy – especially in the medical and political fields. Supposedly peer review & professional codes of conduct are supposed to solve for much of this – but, to me anyway, doesn't seem sufficient these days for those higher-stakes fields of study...