Comment by carefree-bob

The root of the problem is technocracy -- deferring to "science" when big money is at stake, because those scientists will be corrupted. Only trust the integrity of scientists in fields where the financial stakes are very small. Everywhere else, assume money has corrupted key actors when evaluating the trustworthiness of their results. There is no special formalism or ritual that can stop this -- not citations, not replications, not peer review. All are trivial to game when the money at stake is big enough, but we can do is try to improve transparency and treat everything with skepticism.

One thing I would very much like to see is personal financial disclosures about grant awards, salaries, and funding sources of the main authors of a paper.

The main author received a $400,000 grant from the Save Our Turtles foundation and a $2 million dollar grant from the John "Turtle Lover" Heisenberg foundation when writing his peer-reviewed paper revealing that more public funding for turtle sanctuaries unlocks massive local economic benefits in the Upper Mississippi Delta.