More on the curse of popularity

When I blogged about the disturbing way that popularity has become the single criterion by which literary or artistic merit is measured, I didn't have academic journals in mind. But according to the Guardian, a single quantitative measure is now being applied here too - how many people are referring to your work?

So presumably, if more researchers refer to the flat earth theory than to the work of modern physicists, that means the flat earthers are right?

Imagine, if you will, a world in which our traffic laws reflected common practice rather than the Highway Code....