alt Hacker News> That's the sense in which the numbers game is more important than the genius factor.
Numbers game doesn't work in the idealized way you think it does. if you let too many mediocre or bad people become scientists, some of them engage in fraud or ill- considered modelmaking, which wastes the time of good scientists who are in the place of having to reproduce results that were never going to work.
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I didn't say more people should become career scientists; the incentives of that are all messed up from trying to measure research output like it's a product. IMO the best way to prevent junk science is to teach more people to tell good science from bad. Better understanding is empowering regardless of career.
Would you have any reference of why it matters the number of people doing something for some to engage in something nefarious? I would expect to happen no matter the number of people.
I feel it is more connected to the culture (for example I would expect to happen more in a hierarchical culture than in an egalitarian culture, or more in a believing culture than in a critical culture).
Pretty impossible to compensate for or prevent. The day doctor or phd because a prestigious title; the first fraudsters were born. If the title becomes even more prestigious, the more damage can a bad actor be able to evoke with its influence.