I see what seems to me to be an increasing trend, and it is a sign of a weak intellect: judging a message by the character of the messenger. To put it bluntly: If a statement is true, it doesn't matter if the person making the statement is morally bankrupt or personally degenerate. If a statement is false, it doesn't matter how morally admirable he or she might be, or how personally admirable. For this reason, I often do not give the citations of who said what when I am writing an opinion piece. Now, if I am making a statement of fact, I would want to quote the source of the "fact," but not for an opinion.
Here is a historical example. During the Second World War, when the Germans were invading the Soviet Union, they came across a mass grave of Polish soldiers. Goebbels, the German Propaganda Minister, blamed the massacre on the Soviet government, which of course denied any involvement. The Germans, they said, murdered the Poles and tried to blame the Soviets. No one believed Goebbels. As it turned out, however, he was correct; the Soviet archives that were opened after the fall of the USSR confirmed that the Soviet government had, in fact, ordered the massacre of captured Polish officers and soldiers.
What could be the possible relationship of the moral character of an observer with a piece of observed data? Simply nothing whatsoever. Oh, it is absolutely true that people do, in fact, often judge a conclusion by the character of the person stating the conclusion, but that simply shows that they have a poor grasp of logical principles. If Einstein had been a child molester, for example, would not E=mc2 anyway? (Please forgive the fact that the "2" is not written as a superscript!) If Gandhi made the statement that the sun orbited the earth, would it not be just as wrong if anyone else made the same statement?
This applies to any field of endeavor, any subject of discussion, without exception.
