RE: The status of science, under my personal feeling.
Well, to answer such a huge post is hard. On my perspective, I don't think the "private sector" wants to take over the academic research. On the other side, differently from academics, we are somehow accountable. In your case, if some big pharma releases some drug which kills people, they will get sued and pay sound money. If we release some IoT which kills people, we get sued: even a stupid dishwasher must be over-tested to avoid problems. If it starts to flood apartments, it is an issue: http://www.reuters.com/article/bosch-siemens-recall-idUSL6N0H117K20130905
You ask me for a solution... well, as De Gaulle said, to get rid of idiots is quite a huge political achievement. And I am not De Gaulle. :) :)
Actually I think the issue is that there is no accountability. Means that, if you deliver the usual Monday paper saying you can cure cancer because of this new protein you discover, and is not true, then people should be able to sue you. If you say that AI will become self-conscious and kill the humankind, you should be accountable and pay because you are spreading panic among customers, which will not buy our products.
The same like the paper you are talking about: you release a paper saying this and that. Many PAID people in the private sector goes to read it, which is a cost for the company. In such a case, this university should have paid for the waste of time.
I think the best solution for bad behavior is accountability: if you find a new protein, then you've found a new protein. Inventing this could cure the breast cancer just to end on any women magazine is not acceptable.
My solution , if asked, is: accountability. People publishing papers should be, at least in theory, accountable for bad practice , misleading titles and others. This could force universities and foundations to introduce quality standards.
In my experience in the private sector, people will implement quality standards only when is made accountable. This is valid also for universities.
Don't worry about my way to answer: first I'm Italian and I cannot use my friendly gesture :) :) , second, I'm not native english speaker...
Thank you for the great response. And you are right accountability does solve the issue. I was surprised Donald trump didn't try to sue the media for slander during his campaign, seemed like a move he would make;) that said accountability for the words we say must be held to some standard. I know I am held accountable for my words in and out of psychosis, as I suffer from the illness schizophrenia. I will say really bizarre things but I either apologize when I realize my mistake later or I stand behind it as at the time all the evidence I had suggested I was correct in my words. People don't take apologies very well after you tell them the horrible things you see in psychosis. The media has not even issued an apology or admitted wrong doing. The stand behind well my job is to report what I see and report it before my competition does. I saw an ad the other day of the same company wear the day before they praised bitcoin and the next day they were saying bitcoin would be the demise of the financial sector. It was extreme polar opposite portrayals of the same company by the same reporting agency on back to back segments. I don't understand the medias goal in why they are manipulating their viewers into such divided groups. To me it has to be more than just profits. they should be held accountable when they cause mass histeria, mass divisions, major losses, and political turmoil. I can see accountability being an issue system wide that no one wants to be the leader or the decision-maker because then they are also responsible and by responsible I mean liable criminal and monetary for the outcome of it might be projected to be unfavorable. Everyone wants clear defined answers of what will happen if they do this or that decision. In life there are no definite answers, rather every choice you make could be your best or worst like a random lottery. You can act with all the knowledge in the world to head one way but the slightest thing can in turn offset your data by such a degree you end up far away from your original projection. For every assurance there must be an error in return when you place it in terms of energy. For ever action there is an equal reaction. I feel as though we have found ourselves in the eye of the storm so to speak. I could read your words perfectly btw, you write very well in English.
Hi Kristy, the media goal was dramatically changed after the Internet. While with normal press you needed to make it interesting and accurate, in the internet the clickstream is more important. Clickstream means the number of impressions per page is important. So it doesn't matters if you write something true or not, the problem is to have more impressions on that page. The extreme of this is the clickbait web, where most of news have no facts in behind of it. So when you see "bitcoin is the solution of everything" and "bitcoin is the apocalypse", the purpose is the same: to get the interest of people, and make them click on the link.
Science is also being perverted to this: you have the "new pill to lose weight", as well as "the new therapy for psoriasis", "enlarge your penis", "hot to grow back your hairs", and more. Out of commercials, when you discover a new protein, is better if you say "this could prevent the breast cancer", because you know most of woman will read the articles after the headline.
So the agenda has dramatically changed for the media, because the way to monetize news has changed. You will see more and more of this, and now I have to say, it will hit also facts themselves. I think I will write an article on that.