The actual complaint was that the thesis failed to "exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of learning." I'm not sure exactly how you get from there to "didn’t show that he’d studied enough prior research".

That extrapolation notwithstanding, what exactly do you think "shmoozing" means? In academia it does not mean going to your committee's cocktail parties and letting them win at golf. It means citing their work (i.e. "demonstrating that you have studied prior research") so that they can then use the fact that they are highly referenced to advance their own careers.