Being cited doesn't mean he has something specific to say about those fields. He's an influential scientist so people may cite him when they found something vaguely related to his theories, to make their findings seem more important.
I didn't imply a yearning for anything, I was just saying a citation can mean different things in different circumstances. I think you've fallen prey to the polarization that Chomsky is putting forth: either you are dealing with huge amounts of data and don't care about theory, or you're a rationalist whose theories don't need any empirical support. The reality of successful science is on neither of these extremes, of course.
And by the way I do think that judging human performance by simple metrics is problematic, but not because it's statistics or not 'high-level', simply because it doesn't take enough information into account; it's a shortcut to the actual concept of quality, which is dangerous when metrics are used in decision-making. Automated metrics give an air of objectivity which an expert opinion doesn't have, even though the latter may well be much more informed.
