True competitors, be they players or fans, know that injuries are a loss to everyone. I am of course in favor of good manners and honesty. But it seems to me that citations are needed within a work to give it persuasive force where it is needed. A writer's persuasive case may, in some circumstances, depend only on the appeal to commomplace facts. But far more often it will depend on unfamiliar facts.
Citations lend respectability and even power to an author's work.
Dishonest citation, if discovered, casts doubt on the worth of the writer's arguments. Readers ought to know this about the value of citation in a piece of persuasive writing. It might make them more skeptical about popular and journalistic styles that often appeal to no sources or only cite unnamed sources. I suspect this is healthy attitude to have about such writing. Sokal himself sees the post-modernists as threatening the notion of fact and objectivity as scientists usually understand these ideas.