Academia absolutely must find a way to deal with this if we want to be able to say things like "trust the science" when it comes to important issues like vaccinations.
Trust is the underlying problem. Few people actually understand all aspects of science when it comes to #ClimateChange or #Vaccinations or #COVID.
All we have is the trust in competent people doing the research with a cursory understanding of what's going on.
Erode that trust and we have a collapse of society.