> The inconsistent standards seen in this type of discussion

I assume you must be referring to the standards of the person I was replying to?

> damages sympathy amongst the public

Indeed. The sort of misinformation seen in this thread, presented in an authoritative tone, damages the public perception of the mainstream scientific establishment.

> Every year there are more articles on scientific fraud appear in all kinds of places

If those articles reflect the discussion in this thread so far then I'd suggest that they amount to little more than libel.

Even if those articles have substance, you are at a minimum implying a false equivalence - that the things being discussed in this thread (and the various examples provided) are the same as those articles. I already explained in the comment you directly replied to why the discussion in this thread is not an accurate description of the reality.

> Academics draw a salary to do their job, but when they go AWOL on tasks critical to their profession

Do they? It was already acknowledged that they do unpaid labor in this regard. If society expects those tasks to be performed to a higher standard then perhaps resources need to be allocated for it. How is it reasonable to expect an employee to do something they aren't paid to do? If management's policies leave the business depending on an underfunded task then that is entirely management's fault, no?

> The publishing process is a source of credibility ... but when it publishes ...

As I already pointed out previously, this is conflating distinct things. Credible journals are credible. Ones that aren't aren't. Pointing to trash and saying "that isn't credible" isn't useful. Nobody ever suggested it was.

If you lack such basic understanding of the field then perhaps you shouldn't be commenting on it in such an authoritative tone?

> This Is Fine "but I'm not arguing in favor of it".

Precisely how do you propose that we regulate academic's freedom of speech (and the related freedom of the press) without violating their fundamental human rights? Unless you have a workable proposal in this regard your complaints are meaningless.

I also eagerly await this objective and un-gameable metric of quality that your position appears to imply.

> Fraud is common but This Is Fine because reputable sources don't do it, where the definition of reputable is totally ad-hoc beyond not engaging in fraud.

Violent crime is common [on planet earth] but this isn't relevant to our discussion because the place we live [our city/state/country] doesn't have this issue, where the definition for "place we live" is rather arbitrarily defined by some squiggles that were drawn on a map.

Do you see the issue with what you wrote now?

If a journal publishes low quality papers that makes that journal a low quality outlet, right? Conversely, if the vast majority of the materials it publishes are high quality then it will be recognized as a high quality outlet. As with any other good it is on the consumer to determine quality for themselves.

If you object to the above then please be sure that you have a workable proposal for how to do things differently that doesn't infringe on basic human rights (but I repeat myself).

> today reputable means American R1 universities because they don't do bad stuff like that

It's a quick way of binning things. A form of profiling. By the metrics it holds up - a large volume of high quality work and few examples (relative to the total) of bad things happening.

> except when their employees sign off on it but that's totally different

The provided example upthread was a journal editor, not an author. No one (at least that I'm aware of) is assessing a paper based on the editors attached to the journal that it appeared in. I'm really not sure what your point is here other than to illustrate that you haven't the faintest idea how this stuff actually works in practice.

> The editor of The Lancet has said

Did you actually read the article you refer to here? "Wrong conclusions" is not "fraud" or even "misconduct". Many valid criticisms of the current system are laid out in that article. None of them support the claims made by you and others in this comments section.

> star researchers, entire labs [2] and even presidents who were caught doing long cons of various kinds. This Is Not Fine.

We finally agree on something! It is not fine. Which is why, naturally, those things generally had consequences once discovered.

An argument can certainly be made that those things should have been discovered earlier. That it should have been more difficult to do them. That the perverse incentives that led to many of them are a serious systemic issue.

In fact those exact arguments are the ones being made in the essay you linked. You will also find that a huge portion (likely the majority) of the scientific establishment in the west agrees with them. But agreeing that there are systemic issues is not the same as having a workable solution let alone having the resources and authority to implement it.