On one hand, I like the color combos listed as good (without much context) more than the counterexamples, but like most design writing, it's filled with invisible "Citation Needed"s.
The justifications are mainly like this one: "That’s because these warm colors and blue are super versatile for categories." Or "First, forest green is just very dark. And lightening up the forest green means going into an awkward neon". This begs the question: "Why is green either too dark or awkward?"
I'm guessing this is due to us not understanding the psychology behind it; we fall back to rules of thumb.
Most color theory is better described as "color dogma." There's absolutely nothing wrong with bright green, except that it's too loud for corporate communications and infographics. This is down to taste and conventional wisdom, not science. In edgier venues (contemporary art for example) it's not unusual to find books designed with pure bright greens or hot pinks (even for infographics).
What I'm trying to say is, there is some timeless wisdom here but there are also things that just boil down to conservatism and conformism. Infographics are subject to the constraints of bland corporate design.
The recent book "Data Feminism" discusses this situation:
'In the recent book A Unified Theory of Information Design, authors Nicole Amare and Alan Manning state: “The plain style normally recommended for technical visuals is directed toward a deliberately neutral emotional field, a blank page in effect, upon which viewers are more free to choose their own response to the information.” Here, plainness is equated with the absence of design and thus greater freedom on the part of the viewer to interpret the results for themselves. Things like colors and icons work only to stir up emotions and cloud the viewer’s rational mind.'
Hot pinks (where I think of hot as neon) are one of my rare photosensivity triggers, especially in combination with light greys, or even silver.
I discovered this in a fullpage advert decades ago, where the page was mostly hot pink, and the rather large letters in silver-grey.
That produced an optical illusion wherein the letters and the pink surface drifted apart from each other into infinity, maybe a dozen times per second, and swapping their positions from foreground to background. Almost puke inducing. And lasting for several minutes after, made my field of view "flicker".
Similar thing with the Mint which was trendy in the 90ies.
The justifications are mainly like this one: "That’s because these warm colors and blue are super versatile for categories." Or "First, forest green is just very dark. And lightening up the forest green means going into an awkward neon". This begs the question: "Why is green either too dark or awkward?"
I'm guessing this is due to us not understanding the psychology behind it; we fall back to rules of thumb.