1) I’m not against beamshots, they are very insightful for the performance of a flashlight compared to other lights, i.e. as you pointed out to compare throw, beam profile, tint and contrast.
2) every measurement comes with measuring errors, no reason to dismiss a method for that, but the measurement only becomes pointless if it does not provide more information than not measuring it. In measuring throw, even with an average luxmeter, this is far from the case: it is a way more precise way to compare throw than any beamshot can do. All over BLF people are measuring throw with mostly cheapo luxmeters and the numbers people come up with make surprisingly sense.
3) You suggest that a Cd measurement number is a different thing than the perceived throw with your own eyes. This is nonsense, Cd measurements are the exact same thing as how far your eyes can see with the light, it is just more precise and consistent than your eyes can manage, and therefore to be preferred when a fair comparison between lights is intended.
(there is a discussion that the lux is based on the perceived brightness of the photopic curve, while in low brightness the eye sensitivity follows the scotopic curve, but the peak difference between 555nm and 507nm is not so large that that makes a world of a difference)
Finally, getting your Cd measurement system right within a valuable 10 percent (which is way beyond what you can see by eye) is way easier than measuring lumen within that same 10 percent. It requires a fixed measuring distance (10 meter according to the ANSI standard, but if the reflector diameter is not huge, measuring at 6 or 7 meter does not give significantly different results), and a calibrated luxmeter that goes for under 200 dollar. And I bet that the typical 12 dollar chinese luxmeter will already suffice to obtain a throw number that makes for a valuable comparison with other flashlights around. Mind also that even the cheapest luxmeter has a very decent repeatability, so when you build up a series of throw numbers over a number of flashlights using the same method and luxmeter, they provide a pretty precise comparison between those lights even if the absolute throw number is a bit off.