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This is one of the problems with modern academia. It's hard to extrapolate these things

Oh it's really easy to extrapolate stuff. But perhaps they shouldn't. A lot of papers I've seen recently have wild romantic extrapolations based on cherry picked correlations.

Some of the social sciences are terrible at this. A former partner was a researcher in one of what I now consider to be less respectable fields and she would come up with a feely conclusion and fit the data to it and publish it. Wanted me to co-author one with her and do the statistical analysis. Told her I don't want to be on Retraction Watch.

That could explain how the lead poisoning crowd took over. No, there won't be any retractions, you will be "educated" that you are stupid, "anti science", and too stupid to understand the newly discovered "fact".

Yeah if you don't toe the line of the more senior people in the speciality, next thing you know you're outcast from your institution and no one will talk to you.

This is why I do mathematics. Most of it is impossible to argue against once there's a solid proof :)

(also everyone is really nice in the field!)

The guardian article is not academia.

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