The attitude of "I've never heard of this before" has been a common internet troll for at least 25 years. At some point it's not on me to educate you about things that are widely common knowledge, and there's an art to asking for citations without sounding like you're being dismissive, or shifting all of the effort onto the other person.

The top level comment did not achieve this art, but I've seen worse.

Yeah, something like "Where could I read more about this?" or "Could you point me to some discussion on this?" would have been a much more polite way to ask.