There is a well-known trade-off though. Since publishing is a communication channel between scientists, it only has value as long as it hits some threshold of s

There is a well-known trade-off though. Since publishing is a communication channel between scientists, it only has value as long as it hits some threshold of signal-to-noise. And papers that are badly written, or use sloppy methods, or contain significant mistakes, or of course fraud - all of those add noise. They actively reduce the usefulness of the channel. Unfortunately, the incentives in worldwide academia encourage publishing at all cost, so as academia grows, so does the noise produced. Hopefully the signal grows as well, and I'm not sure where the ratio is today - but you definitely need to police the medium to keep publishing as a useful channel of communication in science.