You can take the academic habit of citing everything just a bit too far…

On balance, I prefer the habit in academic journals of stuffing in citations left, right and centre to the habit in op-eds of giving almost no sources for claims. However, bless ’em, academics do sometimes take this habit to extremes.

Take this example from “Maple Leaf Foods: Crisis and containment case study” in Public Communication Review, Vol. 1, 2010:

A crisis is a fluid, unstable, dynamic situation, (Fink, 1986) that brings an organisation into disrepute and threatens its future profitability, growth, and survival (Lerbinger, 1997).

Unstable crises that threaten profitability? That sure is a controversial and unusual statement which needs references to justify itself.