> If you actually look at paper after paper the core data is horrible or there are simple lapses in judgement about how their research is structured. You sit in graduate class criticizing and laughing at some of this but that's the research that makes the world go round. A lot of our core assumptions are less about data and more about intuitive arguments[....]The real issue is there is nobody but the intellectuals to criticize this bad research...
Which is why, I think, most people outside of the intellectual/journalistic class are just tuning out and losing trust. So much research (especially in this day of internet-powered independent investigators) is so obviously meaningless guff, that people are justifiably apathetic about anything the academic intellectual class thinks.
And they're quite right to do so, in most cases. Not that others necessarily have all the answers, but at least most people don't pretend to the kind of nonsense expertise in evidence at the universities.