It's not a never-ending treadmill because the past isn't being modified. It would be fine by me if they adapted the wording to be for example "we validate a method proposed by various authors before".

Of course I would appreciate a citation, but more than that I don't like false claims of novelty to become cemented into the body of scientific knowledge.

The authors are made aware of the project at the time of revising a pre-print, so not correcting the claims is immoral.

Edit:

The word "novel" in the context of scientific publication doesn't mean "new to the authors", it means "not previously published".

More information:

https://chatgpt.com/share/bf9e0de3-e05b-426c-b682-4ffa5f600f...