This seems to be a pattern in society that has been spreading for a while. Most of our institutions were designed for some proportion of good faith participation. We've totally lost that, with the various hard and soft cheats in academia, with abuses in politics, devaluation of the degree, etc.

Part of it in the article's case is modernization. We could further democratize science with credentialed forums, but we'd have to allow people to publish with freedom, and upvote quality research regardless of our political leanings, and that's just not happening in US society right now, across the board.