Stuck, "are they brazen?"
I think the answer is yes, I don't think they treat anything with care anymore. Brazen indifference to reality is what happens when cults go pear-shaped.
The only argument in town is, "Well it's in the Bible and therefore it must be true". Never do they challenge this shaky premise because if they used critical thinking, the house of cards would surely fall.
They are telling the dumb flock that they are using critical thinking! They brazenly lie.
So now the sheep are told to believe their leaders believe in academic methods of research. Total falsehood!
How do they get away with lying? Easy, they have their own version of 'critical thinking' because they only talk to the dumb uneducated JWs who have had their brains rewired to believe anything the JW org says. What they mean by critical thinking is that they are no longer misquoting authorities because they have been brought to task by scholars who are victims of misapplication of their material by the ignorant Watchtower writers.
The only good which could come out of this is that if they were REALLY to use a critical analysis of texts. It would require bringing a sceptical approach to everything they consider...........they would have to question every premise and find out the real origins of the Bible texts which is mainly borrowed from paganism.
Eventually they would need to admit they have been wrong all along.