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Science is in trouble. And not just because of Trump.

Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up While 'Doctored' is gripping in its own right, it also serves as a warning about the collapse of trust in expert authority. Thanks to the capacious new markets for crankery carved out by social and 'alternative' media — not to mention a worldwide populist revolt against 'the Establishment' in general — there's more grifting and science denial than ever before, and the worst purveyors of pseudoscientific sludge rake in millions precisely by positioning themselves in opposition to mainstream science. Advertisement This gets to why the book's release date proved inconvenient. Donald Trump won a second term as president in part because of a belief that the Establishment needs to be torn down, and the scientific establishment is no exception. When I started writing this article, prior to his inauguration, I was going to cite, as examples, personnel choices like his nominees for head of Health and Human Services (anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and the Environmental Protection Agency (Lee Zeldin, an ardent opponent of meaningful attempts to fight climate change, who has been confirmed). Advertisement Obviously things have gotten far worse since then: Trump and his chief lieutenant, Elon Musk, are attempting to take a swift, At a time of such uncertainty and such dangerous overcorrection, it can feel awkward or inappropriate to point out, as Piller does in 'Doctored,' just how broken some of our cherished mainstream scientific institutions are. Isn't that playing right into Trump's hands? I don't think so. The strategy adopted by many mainstream liberals in response to the populist surge — effectively, plugging our ears and chanting 'Trust the science' over and over — might be comforting, in that it offers a Manichean worldview in which improving the world is a relatively straightforward matter of convincing people of their own ignorance so that they will join the rest of us on board the science train. But this effort has clearly failed. Some populist distrust of mainstream science is unwarranted and harmful, such as most strains of vaccine skepticism. But in plenty of instances, people are more or less correct not to automatically trust mainstream scientists, even if they arrive at that conclusion for reasons some of us might find wanting. Advertisement In other words, while it's easy to accuse those red-staters out there of exhibiting an alarming lack of faith in science, especially now that their wrecking-ball avatar is in power, it's harder — and arguably just as important — to ask whether perhaps we have too much faith in it. The scientific establishment hasn't exactly covered itself in glory in recent decades, given the replication crises that have roiled multiple fields, the data-fraud scandals popping up everywhere from In an abstract sense, sure, science is 'real': Done properly, it can bring us miraculous advances. And good, sound, productive science often proceeds unbothered behind the scenes, developing innovations in medicine or consumer products or whatever else only many years later. But you know what's also real? Human frailty, which chronically hinders the execution of sound science. To ignore this is to let powerful people and institutions off the hook, all while providing more fuel for the burn-it-down crowd. Advertisement Piller's book provides numerous damning examples of the difference between science as we idealize it and science as it is practiced by real-life human beings. For example, much of the data fraud in Alzheimer's research, alleged and proven, involves doctored images. This fraud was uncovered not by journal editors or peer reviewers — the individuals supposedly responsible for such quality control — but by unpaid anonymous sleuths 'who use pseudonyms to post comments' online, as he writes, in hopes that someone who matters would notice and act. All too often, no one does. One of the few sleuths who does this work by name is Elisabeth Bik, a Dutch microbiologist who has become a legendary investigator of such matters (her work cost two-thirds of these cases, absolutely no action had been taken by the journals in question. According to Piller's reporting, which draws frequently from Bik's work, this is no aberration: Journals often slow-walked investigations and have proved quite reluctant to retract papers that seem to plainly warrant it, while universities have frequently closed ranks around researchers credibly suspected of fraud rather than engage in prompt and thorough investigations. In my own reporting on youth gender medicine, I've found that journals and individual researchers not only are loath to correct or explain errors but are often unwilling to even respond to basic questions about their work. Advertisement That's the problem with demanding that people 'trust' science just because it calls itself science, or just because it's being conducted by an institution or an individual bearing impressive-seeming credentials. More deference is not the answer, because undue deference lies at the root of almost every major scandal in science. Why should you trust a journal that refuses to correct its errors or a university that protects a star researcher credibly accused of fraud? And at the risk of repeating myself: While these stories are particularly galling when you read about them in 'Doctored,' given just how much human anguish is at stake, they are by no means unique to Alzheimer's research. It's no surprise, in light of the book he just wrote, that Piller believes that science is in something of a crisis: 'The institutional authorities of science — journals, universities, funders, and regulators — face a pivotal moment,' he told me in an email. 'They need to get serious, fast, about policing fraud and fakery in scholarly papers, medical research, and grant proposals. If they don't, the 'tear-it-down' anti-science forces in the Trump administration and beyond could do lasting damage to essential research we all depend on.' He sent me that note before Trump started to, well, tear it down, and it has proved depressingly prescient. I don't have confident answers other than yes, definitely read 'Doctored' if you want to better understand how science goes wrong. Based on the hasty and careless way they're operating, it's extremely likely that Donald Trump and Elon Musk or their subordinates are going to do more harm than good. But the current political situation isn't forever; in the future, our scientific institutions (or what is left of them) will still have to prove they're worthy of our trust. And they have a long way to go. Jesse Singal, a journalist in New York City, is the author of and cohost of the podcast A version of this essay first appeared in his Substack newsletter, , and has been adapted with permission. He can be reached at