So, you're against this because somewhere someone has crappy data analysis for a puff piece on academic rating? What does that have to do with a reverse index, which is amazingly useful? It's a standard part of library research. No one said anything about ranking nodes or users or making statistical reports. It's just connecting nodes about the same topics to each other to make it better for the user.
Don't give too much weight to an unrelated social consequence. Don't ever make anything useful lest someone might misuse it! Oh, the horror!