It's easy to criticize the cargo cult. It's hard to not get caught. :) The problem is that except where you are familiar with all the relevant technical detail

It's easy to criticize the cargo cult. It's hard to not get caught. :) The problem is that except where you are familiar with all the relevant technical details (and I mean technical broadly here), you end up having to fall back on other methods of evaluation. In the best case, you'll have the advice of an expert who is truly familiar with the relevant details, or enough of them to form good approximate insights. Probably at least some of the time, though, you don't have access to that expert (or, worse, you're not equipped to distinguish an expert from a bozo). So, you back on heuristics... like social proof and examples of success...