I think part of the issue is that these people end up having influence on policy wether on purpose or not, which means their bad faith actions can have very real consequences.
It's a self-reinforcing problem.
A. Tom Shugart is incentivized not to contradict DoD personnel because it might piss off some of his contacts.
B. DoD is incentivized to rely on Tom Shugart and give him gigs because he is a subject-matter expert who toes the line.
This creates a negative feedback loop.
In this particular instance, the problem is, that a mini nuclear submarine sinking in this location is indeed a possible, even if extremely unlikely. The circumstantial "evidence" means that you can construct a plausible explanation. Of course, any good scientist/investigator/analyst would realize that the "evidence" is completely inconclusive and that dozens of other perfectly innocuous possibilities exist that would explain the presence of cranes, workers, extra activity, etc.
However, the article has been written, the DoD official already made the statement, and a critical mass of both the audience and the experts has been formed where they are essentially "forced" to stick with the story. The most likely outcomes now is either,
A. Tom Shugart and other experts/DOD slowly walk back their claims over the next few days/weeks/months, at which point nobody will see the retraction and for sure, nobody will care.
B. The story is allowed to keep circulating until it reaches a natural death. Many months and years in the future the WSJ article and twitter threads become common citations of why China's Navy is X, Y, or Z.
Just like with H.I. Sutton, I think it's wrong to simply dismiss Shugart from now on. His reputation is definitely hit, but he has produced good work in the past, and will likely produce more good work in the future. I'll just be more scrutinous when browsing his Tweets and articles in the future.
To quote Stannis Baratheon, "A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Eachs hould have its own reward."
