I’ll go further and say that criticism is _none_ of those things and that conflating is tantamount to scaremongering with a straw man. An academic must be prep

I’ll go further and say that criticism is _none_ of those things and that conflating is tantamount to scaremongering with a straw man. An academic must be prepared to defend his research. An academic must be willing to change their mind when information warrants it. A researcher must expect and even welcome queries, challenges, and deep questions. A member of the academic community must politely but rigorously criticise presented research or theories because science is based on cordial mutual doubt, that’s why we insist on independent replication and verification. Play fair but don’t be deferential. And don’t tarry every critic with the epithets of heckling. It’s called academic debate, without it you have progress, just polite mutually-reinforcing deference that advances human knowledge and technology one iota.