Historically, the sciences were limited to people that had the wealth to independently research and verify their work. These days, people perform scientific res

Historically, the sciences were limited to people that had the wealth to independently research and verify their work. These days, people perform scientific research for a living wage (which in itself, I am not saying is a bad thing --scientific progress is a good thing-- no doubt), but people have to optimize for income producing potential, which means pumping out papers, even if they are of dubious quality, which may or may not intentionally be done. Not all scientists are optimizing for number of publications, but a good number are.