I've seen stuff on VDARE which involved very poor presentation or evaluation of data, and the motivation for it was pretty apparent. The signal to noise ratio there is extremely bad

I'm not sure you saw my point here. Yes VDARE is a politically oriented site, its goal being immigration restriction thus duh some people with racist attitudes are probably writing for it. Selectively applying such standards for the discussion of some policy issues seems like a bad idea. I can see your point if I was citing someone with a very poor reputation who happens to be right, but I don't at all agree citing someone who is ok when it comes to data and its interpretation, who happens to have written for a magazine that sometimes isn't ok.