That's only part of the reason that this type of content is used in academic papers. The other part is that you never know what PhD student / postdoc / researcher will be reviewing your paper, which means you are incentivized to be liberal with citations (however tangential) just in case someone is reading your paper, and has the reaction "why didn't they cite this work, of which I had some role in?"

Papers with a fake air of authority of easily dispatched with. What is not so easily dispatched with is the politics of the submission process.

This type of content is fundamentally about emotions (in the reviewer of your paper), and emotions is undeniably a large factor in acceptance / rejection.

Indeed. One can even game review systems by leaving errors in for the reviewers to find so that they feel good about themselves and that they've done their job. The meta-science game is toxic and full of politics and ego-pleasing.