Scientific papers aren't for money, but they are for faculty positions and tenure. They suffer from much of the same grandstanding and outright fabrication as books do.

We're living in a post-truth era, and it's a problem we need to solve.

Where I'd like to land isn't: "Harvard astronomer gets bullied by peers" or "Harvard astronomer makes millions of dollars from half-baked theory" but "Harvard astronomer presents half-baked theory, we have a serious conversation about it, and we treat it as a potential hypothesis."

I like quirky hypotheses, and I've found I've learned a lot investigating them.