I’m not sure about the contradiction. The first is about what price might appeal to professionals. The other is about the economics about being a knife maker and scaling. Is there any specific point in which the contradiction lies?
The first article argues that knives from makers are too expensive, while the second is also an effective argument to say why knives are not expensive enough. If the author had actually done the research, it would be clear that the reason why some professional knife makers knives are so expensive is too address all the concerns made in the second article (and I base this on details read here in the forum). I've had a knife maker expressly say to me that they have stopped "working cheap" to explain a price increase.
There is a difference between research as used colloquially and research as in what my work is. If I were to complain every time someone used the words “research” and “theory” incorrectly (from my professional point of view) I would have time for nothing else. It would also be silly of me to reject an argument just because these words are used colloquially.
I had quite a bit of discussions with Marine over the years about knife making as a business, and I helped with some of the data in that article. My opinion is that it’s not a search of content that drove the discussions. It was a genuine interest in learning more about knife making as a business. For me it also led to actual research. The data is collected and I hope to write a paper about it. If I can find the time and a suitable co-author that can help.
While there may have been a general desire for true interest, writing an article while overlooking or not even acknowledging points in an article that they just wrote a few months before (as in the two noted), to me seems of just trying to generate content as the random reader may only see the one article. In contrast, look at the way Larrin develops and back-references his old info on Knife Steel Nerds