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I don’t read much speculative fiction, but this is an engaging topic. My first reaction is a general one; I like to know that the author has thought out a consistent world, but I strongly dislike info dumps to bring the reader up to speed. Your example of the Lancet article is a perfect example of the right way to handle things.
One example of bad world building that’s stayed with me is in Jack Finney’s Time and Again.. I didn’t mind a few liberties with New York history. Egregious, however, was the denouement in the torch of the Statue of Liberty, which involved travel through time and space, which contradicted everything that had happened up until then. But the author obviously couldn’t resist the historical fact of the display of the torch in Madison Square; so many errors come from things the author couldn’t resist.
There were far too many inconsistencies in the Harry Potter books for me to think them good; the overarching issue as with the map example is the way in later books a magical device or power was invented that would have entirely negated earlier events if it had been employed. But they were very readable for all that, until the last book where it was really impossible to tie up all the loose ends in a way that made sense.
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