In general, a scientific review does not cite nonexistent/non-peer reviewed/advocate sources [1].<p><i>It's entirely invalid to say that because they came to a certain conclusion and the majority of the cited studies support that conclusion, they picked the citations to support it.</i><p>The argument is being made that because they eschewed the normal practice and included <i>unscientific</i> citations <i>only in support of their thesis</i>, we can conclude cherrypicking was going on. You can't apply it to a normal review, since a normal scientific review doesn't normally base their claims on anecdotes from mountaineering magazines.<p>[1] Such sources are occasionally cited as novelties or as evidence of importance of the topic. E.g., "as evidenced by recent media attention \cite{NYT, FOX, NBC, CBS} my topic is important".