Emphasis on research quantity over quality in the modern corporatised university disincentivises mindful research where citations accurately reflect source content. To indicate the extent of this problem in tourism, this research analyses the 155 citations in peer-reviewed journals to Weaver's (2011) article “Can sustainable tourism survive climate change? published in Journal of Sustainable Tourism, which questions conventional wisdom on the need for tourism to prioritise climate change action. Over one-third (36.8%) of citations were ‘knowledge impeding’ due to inaccurate content citation, while none were ‘knowledge developing’ through application, testing or alteration of Weaver (2011) content. The remaining citations accurately cited source content and were therefore ‘knowledge facilitating’. No statistically significant relationship pertained between citation quality and journal quality, or between the former and concurrent reference to Scott's (2011) rejoinder “Why sustainable tourism must address climate change” published in Journal of Sustainable Tourism, a rejoinder. Significant relationships were identified with publication time and journal specialisation, with more recent years and non-tourism journals having lower quality citations; specifically, 64.0% of citations in 2016–2020 non-tourism journals were knowledge impeding. Recommendations include author disclosure statements confirming citation accuracy, random pre-publication audits of accepted papers, and provision of ‘good citation’ guidelines on journal websites.