These are not linguists doing that. No self-respecting linguists will waste time doing prescriptivism. These are two linguistic articles about this constructs that are quoting amateur language usage manuals. The oldest one is a boys magazine[1] published in 1864 discussing "the Queen's English"[2]. The newest one (Crews et al.) seems to be an obscure usage manual for writers[3].

As demonstrated here, "try and" is older and more "original" than "try to", if not contemporary with it. Any other reason why would "try to" be more "correct" cannot even make sense as anything more than a purely uneducated opinion. When you dig deep into most examples of perspectivism you'll usually run into the same story too. "Incorrect" forms often predate the "correct" forms and are often employed by respected writers (such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen). And even if they don't, there isn't really any scientific ground to brand one form as incorrect.

Linguists do not generally engage in linguist prescriptivism. As far as I'm concerned (and I believe most linguists would agree), this is stylistic opinion at best and pseudoscience at worst. Still, it's not linguists can do anything to stop amateurs from publishing prescriptive language usage manuals, so you'll always have people who claim that "try and" or "ain't" or "me and my friend went for a walk" are incorrect.

[1] https://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.php?j...

[2] Yes, this is Edmund Routledge whose father is the namesake of the present scholarly publisher, but they were just publishing popular books back in the 19th century.

[3] https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Frederick-Crews/dp/0070136386