Abandoning weak hadiths

Over the last week or so, I had the occasion to re-read Prof Hashim Kamali's "Hadith Methodology", and was struck by statement he made about Da'if, or weak, Hadiths:

Many prominent contemporary ulama including Ahmad Muhammad Shakir, Nasir al-Din al-Albani, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ajaj al-Khatib and Manna al-Qattan have advocated the view that the Da'if should be abandoned. I too believe that a restrictive approach to the admissibility of weak hadith is safer and in greater harmony with the objective of preserving the purity of hadith. To mix the weak in the general corpus of valid hadith is likely to undermine the credibility of the latter and it should be avoided. [1]

I feel that expunging weak Hadiths from the Hadith literature is as drastic as it is self-defeating. Although most Hadiths that are classified as being Da'if have obvious defects, there are some that require a scholar to make a value judgment.

I would also argue that the continual existence of weak Hadiths within the Hadith literature is of immense benefit to scholars, who will have a more immediate experience of the methodology used to evaluate Hadiths. Without weak Hadiths, a large part of the methodology will atrophy and eventually vanish.

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Notes:
[1] Hashim Kamali, Hadith Methodology, pg 218-219.