With false claims like the ancestor here being commonly made it becomes plausible that software written in rust could be faulty at a higher rate than in less safe languages, specifically because of the lack of care and dismissal of risks (plus ecosystem considerations).

I wouldn't go so far as to argue that it is at this point. But I think rust advocates probably ought to stop arguing as though it's axiomatically true. Maybe Mozilla could be talked into funding an academic study comparing defect rates in rust vs other languages used for systems programming.

Beyond substantiating the rust-improves-reliability trope, it could also identify areas for improvement where it doesn't.