He's complaining about the statistics version of a con artist putting on a nice suit, or making a glossy website for your crap company. Or putting out a "white paper".

Adding the easy trappings or dishonest indicators of "professionalism" to your junk product is bad for society.

It's not a novel insight, and the discussion is rather cluttered with irrelevant detail, so I not sure it's worth sharing. (Of course it's fine for Gelman to write his meandering thoughts on his blog.)