I think the article makes a strawman:

Academics hold tightly to the view that progress in our system is meritocratic. Hiring, decisions about article publication, citation of the work of our peers, the awarding of research funds, raises, promotions and more are determined, we believe, rationally, as a result of the objective evaluation of clearly stated requirements for advancement.

I don't think most academics think that either hiring decisions, publication decisions or citation decisions are 100% based on explicit criteria. Indeed anybody who doesn't use a variety of implicit criteria for decision making is a fool.

Smart people make hiring decisions often based on the predicted effect of the hiring decisions and not based on whether "requirements" are meet and a person did certain things in the past the fill checkboxes. Goodharts law makes the practice on hiring based on clearly stated criteria stupid.