An e-mailer defends footnotes:

It is certainly true that many scholars in certain fields use footnotes (or endnotes) as evidence that they belong at the table. Marxist scholarship seems to be a contest concerning who can have the most references, for instance.
However, generalizing this phenomenon is a mistake. Many scholars use notes to defend claims that would unnecessarily interrupt the flow of the argument in the text body. It is tiresome to read caveat after caveat.
Putting them in the notes allows you to a) show that you are aware of the issue, and b) suggest how to resolve the issue. This latter is important in that many such issues could be paper topics in their own right. The former is important, not because it shows you are familiar with the literature, but because it shows that you aren’t an idiot.
This can be abused, of course. I’ve seen notes take up nearly an entire page (in the smaller font). Some philosophy journals have a policy of publishing only with no notes. I find them indispensable, myself.