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Though not an expert on the ECFs by any means, I still see some potential issues in the line of reasoning you say these scholars are employing. You might want to review Tim's article on the textual debate, if you've not already seen it: http://www.pfrs.org/PFRV/preface.pdf

1. They are assuming that the early Christians who passed these writings along to us did not bother to critique them or research their authenticity.

2. They are assuming that their critical methods have yielded accurate results in the past. Tim's article throws a bucket of cold water on that idea.

3. While I don't know how many alternate readings of the ECFs exist, to argue that there is no value in what copies we do have is intellectually dishonest. There are plenty of tests we can apply to existing manuscripts. We can test them in a couple of different ways to verify their age. We can compare the writings to what others had to say about particular authors, checking for agreement in style, perspective, consistency, etc. We can check to verify the accuracy of any historical details they relate (at least those we know enough about). And we can check to see what, if any, liberties they took in quoting the scriptures and what variants they quoted.

4. Even if they were to argue that given letters are "probably not from the listed author," the doctrine espoused by the authors is enough to demonstrate that such teachings did in fact exist among the early Christians; and the more often we encounter an idea in the writings of that time, the more likely it is to reflect what a majority of Christians believed in those days (and the more likely it is to have been apostolic, particularly when the given ECF lived or taught in Asia Minor). Writings that were considered spurious or heretical would not have been preserved as often or as carefully as those believed to be authentic and orthodox. Besides, if they're going to argue that so-and-so didn't really write such-and-such -- contrary to the author's claims in the document in question, the accepted tradition of the church, and the correspondence of that document to what we know about a given ECF -- the greater burden of proof rests with the naysayer.

Again, I'm not an expert on the topic, but those thoughts come immediately to mind. Whether we have a lot of variants with which to compare and contrast a given manuscript does not automatically render that manuscript worthless.

- Robert