Let's not forget base rates. It is easier to find hundred people willing to do rationalization than one person willing to do LW-style rationality; even among the scientists. Therefore the former will produce more total output.
I don't think the argument is based on the amount of people who succeed with LW-style rationality.
Andrew Gelman is the other of an important book on Bayesian statistics and therefore worthy to be listened to when he says that people draw the wrong conclusions from Bayesianism.
Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics
This is a 2012 paper by Andrew Gelman and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi on what they view as a misuse of Bayesian statistics in scientific reasoning. I found this interesting because their definition of hypothetico-deductivism closely matches up with Eliezer Yudkowsky's definition of rationalization, and their definition of inductive inference closely matches up with his definition of rationality. The definitions:
Eliezer Yudkowsky:
Rationality - Starting from evidence, and then crunching probability flows, in order to output a probable conclusion.
Rationalization - Starting from a conclusion, and then crunching probability flows, in order to output evidence apparently favoring that conclusion.
Andrew Gelman and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi:
Inductive Inference - An accretion of evidence is summarized by a posterior distribution, and scientific process is associated with the rise and fall in the posterior probabilities of various models.
Hypothetico-Deductivism - Scientists devise hypotheses, deduce implications for observations from them, and test those implications. Scientific hypotheses can be rejected (i.e., falsified), but never really established or accepted in the same way.
Now, what's interesting about the paper is that in contrast to Eliezer Yudkowsky's view they argue that rationalization (hypothetico-deductivism) is the correct analytic method, and rationality as Eliezer Yudkowsky defined it is wrong. They make the following argument:
They also argue Popper made multiple errors, but that his fundamental view is closer to correct than Kuhn's, and that correct science is about attempting to falsify hypotheses. They simply disagree with how Popper went about doing it.
Another interesting issue to me is that if you look at the main post Against Rationalization, Adirian and Vladimir_Nesov both suggested that both forms of analysis are acceptable, but TheAncientGeek was the only one who argued rationalization over rationality, and his comment received multiple downvotes. This also appears to me to have been a major concept central to many parts of the sequences. Andrew Gelman and Eliezer Yudkowsky had a bloggingheads.tv conversation together, b̶̶̶u̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶I̶̶̶'̶̶̶m̶̶̶ ̶̶̶n̶̶̶o̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶i̶̶̶f̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶i̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶p̶̶̶a̶̶̶r̶̶̶t̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶u̶̶̶l̶̶̶a̶̶̶r̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶p̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶ ̶̶̶e̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶r̶̶̶ ̶̶̶c̶̶̶a̶̶̶m̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶u̶̶̶p̶̶̶.̶̶̶
Thoughts?
Edit - Andrew Gelman and Eliezer Yudkowsky discuss this issue at the end of the bloggingheads video. Click on "The difference between Eliezer and Nassim" for their take. I also fixed a link.