> He is not suggesting the use of citation count as a metric for quality. I have no idea how you could have possibly gotten that from reading this article.
TFA is extremely clear that the presence of citations (in the aggregate, as a count) on “weak” papers is something the author considers a problem and a perhaps a moral failure on the part of citing authors. The author also believes that citations should be “allocated” to true claims.
* “Yes, you're reading that right: studies that replicate are cited at the same rate as studies that do not. Publishing your own weak papers is one thing, but citing other people's weak papers?” Here citations are clearly treated as a bulk metric, and “weak” is a quality metric.
* “ As in all affairs of man, it once again comes down to Hanlon's Razor. Either: Malice: [the citing authors] know which results are likely false but cite them anyway. or, Stupidity: they can't tell which papers will replicate even though it's quite easy.” Aside from being gross and insulting — here the author claims that the decision to cite a result can have only two explanations, malice and stupidity. Not, for example, the much more straightforward explanation that I mention above (and that the author even admits is likely.)
* “ Whatever the explanation might be, the fact is that the academic system does not allocate citations to true claims.” The use of “allocate citations” clearly recognizes that citation counts are treated as a metric, and indicate that that the author wishes this allocation to be done differently.
* “This is bad not only for the direct effect of basing further research on false results, but also because it distorts the incentives scientists face. If nobody cited weak studies, we wouldn't have so many of them.” Here the author makes it clear that they see citation count (correctly) as a metric that encourages researchers, and believes the optimal solution is to remove all (but perhaps explicitly negative?) citations to those papers.
> A bullet point in his "what to do" section is literally "ignore citation counts".
Yes, after extensively complaining about the fact that citations aren’t used by authors in a manner that reflects the way they’re used as a metric, then complaining further about the fact that authors do not use them this way and repeatedly urging them to change the way citations are used — the author then admits that their use of a metric is problematic and should be ended.
We agree! The only problem here was that the author took a detour to a totally absurd place to get there.