This is not a study but a reality for me. At one point on HN I wanted to farm for karma points. That period lasted for a few weeks, I wasn't too intense about it, just a fun question I had.
My tactic? Find something that has something like 15 upvotes and you suspect to be rising quick in upvotes. Create the first comment and your best to make an as thoughtful comment as possible, even if you don't know anything about the topic.
Result: I was always within the top 3 getting between 10 to 50 upvotes.
One idea I have (just brainstorming) force users to make a vote first of 10 random products and only after they see the results.
It could probably use some UX tweaking since forcing someone to vote isn't quite nice, but at least it takes care of this effect that was described.
Serious question: what motivation was there?
AFAIK points aren't worth anything and don't unlock anything after the first few, probably to help block spam/bots.
It's exceedingly rare that I even click a profile here, and even then it's usually to see what a person works on not how many points they've accumulated.
In fact, there are many cases where the most knowledgeable person on a subject comments, I click to see who they are, and realize they've only ever commented a few times. I imagine they either mostly lurk, or have an idle account they just use when friends drag them into the conversation.