We must always put this in context, and I think we need to be careful about the narratives. Here's a few rules of thumbs

- Realistically the only people who can determine if a work is sound or not are other researchers in that same field.

- Peer review is a weak signal: reviewers are good at recognizing bad papers but not good at recognizing good papers (read this carefully).

- Most papers aren't highly influential. Thus meaning that we don't rely heavily on the results of most works (we rely weakly or purely for citations).

- The more influential a work is the more likely it is to be reproduced and scrutinized.

- Benchmarks are benchmarks, nothing more. Benchmarks are weak signals at best and shouldn't be used to make strong conclusions. Be that a p-value, FID, or even likelihood.

So we have to keep this in mind for a lot of reasons. One is how we discuss with the public. Headlines like this often make people grow wary of science. While scrutiny is good we have a good history of being successful. All processes are noisy but the cream has is more likely to come to the top and the surface is less noisy. It also tells us about who we should be listening to when taking advice and summaries of works. If you believe the news has failed us, then look to the sources.

I see many who only get their science from news sources that claim scientists are corrupt. I found this odd, especially considering I've worked at national labs and I can tell you that no one there is doing it for the money. You'd have to be a fucking idiot to do science for money. It doesn't pay well, you never get real time off, there is a high barrier to entry, and you are under high amounts of pressure. We're on a forum with Silicon Valley wages: the average physicist wage is 100k, what you'd make with a BS in CS but need an advanced degree for working at a lab. Let try to compare likes and likes by looking at LLNL. As a PhD physicist you'll make between $150k and $200/yr. You'll make the same as a PhD computer scientist. Yeah, this seems good, but we need to consider that if you drove 45 minutes west then that would be your base salary and you'd be making the same in other compensations. You can easily verify this and there's plenty of people you can ask for personal experience (I've seen people jump ship often). This doesn't prove that they aren't corrupt, but it provides strong evidence that if these people were motivated by monetary compensations (or even prestige) then there are far better opportunities for them.

Another important aspect, which I think is critical to forums like this, is to be careful how you as a non domain expert. Opinions are fine and no one should prevent you from having them. But the confidence in your opinion should be proportional to your qualifications. If you're an expert in one domain I'm sure you're frustrated by how many people discuss your domain as if they knew so much and they get so much wrong. How wrong answers float to the top of forums (HN and Reddit) and the gems are hidden. This usually comes down to a lack of nuanced understanding. Simple answers are almost never correct. Murry Gell-Mann amnesia doesn't just apply to reading the news. Discussions can be had without teaching. Scientific discussions aren't done through debate. Determine your goals, and ask yourself if the way you are discussing allows you to change your opinion or not. Make sure you're on the same page as others, using the same assumptions (this is a key failure point). I'll argue to go in with care. If you don't, you're just adding to the noise.