Partially true. It takes some time to learn how to spot genuine reviews.
However, even in the "encouraged" reviews you can still discover what problems people solve with certain class of tools and how much money they're ready to pay for them.
Doubt it. I've worked for a SAAS company in the past that practices the incentivized review behaviour. Genuine (organic) reviews were indistinguishable from incentivized reviews. Poor reviews, which are the most valuable for this type of research, were always removed.
However, even in the "encouraged" reviews you can still discover what problems people solve with certain class of tools and how much money they're ready to pay for them.