If the system depends on the assumption of honesty, good faith, or competence for that matter, on the part of the would-be researchers... is it still a system?
Waldo does have a point though. If you make up things in a humanities/social science journal essay, and to a journal reviewer they seem to add up even though they unknowingly aren't real, things can easily slip through a review process, even if the conclusions seem wacky.
The lesson is that even if something is published in a humanities academic journal, it is still a subjective opinion, and so just because an opinion argument is published in an academic journal doesn't mean that opinion is correct. It's still subject to an "appeal to authority" fallacy. The bigger lesson here is for students & everyone to think for themselves, and be critical.
Everyone of every ideological stripe has confirmation bias, we want to believe that which confirms our beliefs, and are much more critical on opinions that oppose it. We're all players in the great information war that's been going on basically the entirety of human history, and sometimes the best ideas don't win, only the loudest.