Jokes aside, great essay Bhante. You’ve highlighted some of the aspects of the article that bothered me but which I hadn’t quite articulated before.
That said, I did appreciate the “obvious” side of Collins’ article. His insistence on separating out Theravada from Early Buddhism in particular is, of course, an important topic you’ve written about yourself (if, admittedly, with a clarity and precision Collins’ himself admitted was lacking from his own work).
There’s a similar problem across the sciences these days, where in many fields you get more citations for writing meta-analysis than for doing original research. I’m not sure what the solution is, but still, it is sometimes helpful to “restate the obvious”