What does the SEO industry think about boosting CTR?

In 2014, Moz's Rand Fishkin ran a CTR case study which moved his site from #7 to #1 in less than 3 hours by sending clicks to his organic search results. These were real people, making real clicks. This was the first real indication that click through rate (CTR) was a factor that could heavily move organic results in the SERPs.

Here are some other published articles to consider:

WordStream

Why You NEED to Raise Organic CTR’s (And How to Do It)

Moz

The Impact of Queries, Long and Short Clicks, and Click Through Rate on Google's Rankings — Whiteboard Friday

Search Engine Journal

Google’s Top Search Ranking Factors of 2016, According to Searchmetrics Study