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djcb comments on The Neglected Virtue of Scholarship - Less Wrong
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I'm not going to argue that scholarship is not tremendously valuable, but in the kind of live discussions that are mentioned here, I'm not sure if it helps that much against the kind of 'dark arts' techniques that are employed. In live-discussions, someone can always refer to some information or knowledge that the opponent may not have handy ('Historians have established this fact ...'), and only some of that can be counter-acted by scholarship.
The examples in the post were debate-specific, but I would suggest that the virtue of scholarship is more broadly applicable. Like many parts of rationality, the most important thing is not to use scholarship to win arguments, but to use scholarship to find the right thing to argue for, or more generally, to become correct.