I don't disagree that there's degradation of quality. There should be a lack of trust in our institutions (and really a need to invest in them more). What confu

I don't disagree that there's degradation of quality. There should be a lack of trust in our institutions (and really a need to invest in them more). What confuses me though is why there is trust in sources that have so much less reason to be trusted. The forces undermining the quality of scientific institutions are at play outside those institutions as well, and outside the framework, there's far less of a defense against them. We're seeing all kinds of chicanery that I had thought had largely been consigned to history, but it's all making a comeback.