<i>I find this tendency pretty counter-productive to learning anything at all.</i><p>More specifically, I think it&#x27;s symptomatic of a tendency towards performative dismissal -- the GP&#x27;s comment is intended to <i>demonstrate</i> the superiority of their knowledge to that of the author, and simultaneously insult the author via dismissal of their work.  It&#x27;s purely a social display, as evidenced by their need to comment on having stopped reading (completely irrelevant to e.g. alerting people to the inaccuracy of a fact essentially tangential to the subject of the piece).