Here's a technique employed in this article and in many other Quillette articles: Person X said A and B; A is wrong because of [some citations], therefore B is wrong, and we conclude that C is completely wrong because science, QED. However, A is a peripheral argument while B is the central one, which in any event does not depend on A, and C is an argument which no one has made and is usually a gross straw-man generalization of B. Another technique, employed here and elsewhere, is: X said S; T is wrong because of [some citations]; but S rests on T therefore S is wrong because science, QED. But, of course, "science" does not show that S rests on T. Even if T => S, the conclusion that S rests on T (i.e. ~T => ~S, which is equivalent to S => T) is wrong. Yet another technique is: A => B according to [some citations] and C => D according to [some citations], therefore A => D because B => C, QED. But B => C is not established.

These are all things that give a cursory reader the illusion of rigor, as they may come to believe that if rigor is used anywhere in the argument, then the argument is rigorous (while, in fact, an argument is rigorous iff rigor is used everywhere). Of course, some of the texts Quillette's articles respond to are not rigorous either, but Quillette's core technique relies on the illusion of rigor, hence pseudoscience or scientism.