According to Aeon, scientists seeking demigod status fly too close to the sun with their claims. There’s also the increase of retractions which can leave an entire scientific community frightened of the resulting stigma.
These retractions are fascinating when they hit the mainstream – the infamous 1998 paper in The Lancet by the British researcher Andrew Wakefield and others that linked autism and vaccines, influenced many thousands of parents on both sides of the Atlantic to stop vaccinating their children. But they’re also damaging – when there’s a lot of bad science out there sometimes it’s hard to know who to believe.