My ire wasn't raised either. But it doesn't do anybody any harm to step back and think for a minute about just what the objectives of his or her hobby are, and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.
The term "scale model" implies that the model in question is a replica of some larger object. (There are other kinds of modeling, such as abstract sculpture.) I got interested in scale modeling when I was about five years old, and I've been interested in it ever since. One reason (maybe the biggest) is that I'm interested in the prototypes - the objects we build scale models of. My first model was a Revell DC-7 airliner. I got excited when a real DC-7 flew over our house, and my parents took me out to the airport to look at the real things closeup.
To me (and, more to the point, to a great many scale modelers) there's not much separation between model building and study of the real things. When I was in the seventh grade my father gave me a copy of Bjorn Landstrom's wonderful book, The Ship, for Christmas. I was hooked. I've been buying and reading books about ships ever since. I've lost track of how many ship books I've bought, but it has to be well up in the hundreds.
And fictional sea stories, too. My mother checked Lieutenant Hornblower out of the library for me about a year later - just after I'd built (though I suspect that's a generous term for it) the Revell H.M.S. Victory.
For me (and, I suspect, to lots of other people), model building and interest in the prototypealways went hand-in-hand. Before I built that model I'd never heard of Lord Nelson. So I started hanging out at the library, and read everything about him I could get my hands on (starting with A.B.C. Whipple's biography for young readers). To me there wasn't much of a gap between models and history. I also built aircraft and tanks - and was constantly reading books about them.
To me (and lots of other people) a model is a research project. I want to know as much as I can about whatever I'm building in model form. That means reading, reading, and more reading - as well as studying plans, photos, and paintings. The idea of building something I know nothing about just isn't part of my cosmos. In high school art class I painted pictures of ships and airplanes (horrible pictures, I'm sure). I wrote papers about nautical topics whenever I could (to the point where the teachers ordered me to write about something else). By the time I finished high school it was taken for granted that I was going to major in history at college. When I was doing research for my M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation, I was using the chance to find out everything I could about eighteenth-century warships. My degree, and my models, got me a job (extremely low-paying) in a maritime museum - and that got me a job in the university from which I'm going to retire next year.
Is that the only "right" way to do it? Of course not. I think my approach to scale modeling is a common one among members of this Forum, but model building (for most of us) is a hobby. People do it for lots of reasons, ranging from creating decorative objects to physical therapy. However a hobbyist wants to do his or her hobby is his or her business, and nobody else's. If somebody were to propose a law requiring that anybody who wanted to build a ship model had to read at least five books about ships first, I'd be among the loudest protestors.
I have noticed, though, that the idea of "I don't care whether it looks like the real thing or not - I like it" seems to be more prevalent in the sailing ship genre than in others. For instance, I'd be surprised if somebody said, "I think the U.S.S. Missouri would look better with two main gun turrets instead of three, so that's how I'm going to build my model." Or "I think a B-17 would look better with two engines, so I'm leaving two off mine." I don't suggest that a person who did such a thing ought to be thrown in jail, or ceremoniously cast out of the FSM Forum into the Outer Darkness. But it sure would seem...odd. To me, redesigning the rigging or spar dimensions of a sailing ship because I like it that way would be just as odd. If that makes me a "purist," I have to plead guilty.
I've also noticed that I'm not the only one who's caught the "interest in the prototype" bug through model modeling. Our good Forum friend David K. started sailing ship modeling by professing that he wasn't interested in accuracy. We've had the pleasure of watching his models evolve from the very good to the outstanding - and, though he still tries to deny it, he's become quite knowledgable about sailing ships and maritime history along the way.
But to each his own. That, to me, is the bottom line. I don't believe any modeler should do something to a model that he/she doesn't enjoy. To me, that means doing something that isn't historically accurate. If others have a different definition - so be it.