We're increasingly aware today of how the media operates cycles of self-referential and self-justifying citations: a TV show will quote an article that reports "some people" taking an issue, which ends up being a quote from someone interviewed for another newspaper article.. and so on. This "legitimacy laundering" is rampant, and we're now getting towards media literacy levels which expose it for many people.
However, most concerning: this is how academia has always worked. It's the great absurdity of peer review, and of citation. This is how entire fields can sustain themselves with little or no scientific validity (esp. see, psychometrics).
We are no where near the equivalent "academic literacy" for generally informed members of the public to understand this problem. Entire fields can be sustained with zero "empirical pressure" to close down. So long as one can cite another who can cite another... and somewhere some government body will take these citations as prima facie evidence of a research programme, then funding will be given and more papers published.
However, most concerning: this is how academia has always worked. It's the great absurdity of peer review, and of citation. This is how entire fields can sustain themselves with little or no scientific validity (esp. see, psychometrics).
We are no where near the equivalent "academic literacy" for generally informed members of the public to understand this problem. Entire fields can be sustained with zero "empirical pressure" to close down. So long as one can cite another who can cite another... and somewhere some government body will take these citations as prima facie evidence of a research programme, then funding will be given and more papers published.