As a PhD student you’d be surprised at how many stupid people are in here. I’ve heard of people talking about using holy water in mouse before experimenting because they are “possessed by devil”, people talking about how “I’m a liberal but female president isn’t going to be strong enough for our country” to their female colleagues, talked with people who told " they[gay people] should just get help" to a gay colleague because her bible says being gay is a sin, those are just extra fun examples, there’s a lot more in daily life that after joining PhD I’ve become a lot skeptic of any research or paper people cite for something. Because lot’s of people just write sentences first then search for papers that agrees, instead of doing actual literature review and learning about diverse view on the matter.
PhD is doing something very niche, intelligence and logical thinking makes it easier, but you can easily just submit a paper in multiple journals until one accepts. Of course your advisor and committee are supposed to weed out those people, but in this culture where more students graduated -> faster tenure +more funding, and everything is measured in numbers, everyone is encouraged to increase the numbers instead of quality. So just because you were able to publish something in a small niche field doesn’t mean you know a lot about the world, or you agree with what other scientists think.
I know different universities and countries have their own system which probably have higher quality control, but this publish and perish culture combined with the competitiveness and lots of money involved in all steps is bound to game the system towards anti-science. Professors don’t really have the luxury of trying things that don’t work for years anymore.