I've sent PubMed an email inquiry.
I was going to ask. Thanks. Let us know the result?
My opinion of the paper was that it was intentionally obscuring its points with gargonisms, a problem that occurs in a lot of scientific papers (due to thought "in-breeding"?), but in this case not really saying anything in the process. Your points on "reference padding" only reinforced that opinion.
I would say they are studying the physical appearance of scientific papers and evolving their argument's camouflage to match.
we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
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