Comment by KK7NIL

> I interpreted "social fabric" to mean "panel of relevant professionals" which is what we currently have but perhaps you interpreted it differently?

That would be one way to implement his suggestion of getting rid of objective (if flawed) measures of a researcher's performance.

I agree that, inevitably, there will be a subjective human decision in there, but I argue that dropping all objective measures of performance and going just on vibes is kicking the door wide open for corruption, while it's merely cracked right now. And the exploit mentioned in this article is a very public and explicit one, which is why other researchers were so aware of it and it eventually caught up to him. If it all gets moved behind closed doors instead, it will be even harder to detect and prosecute this sort of behavior.