I do not have the ability read a scientific paper and judge its merits. I'm a software engineer. I can usually get the gist of what the experiment did, what they found, etc, but not judge the merits.

The fact that this amount of scientific critique can be bought, for someone like me, calls into question any scientific discussion anywhere. Because I don't know who to trust to tell me whether a paper or experiment is good or not.

My natural inclination would be to be suspicious of Monsanto and side with the glysophate paper's author. After it was so thoroughly discredited, I believed the critiques of the paper. However, reading about the methods that were used against Tyrone Hayes, I'm now thoroughly questioning that paper's being discredited. Because the manner in which that paper is being attacked looks so similar to the manner in which Tyrone Hayes was being attacked.

Do you see what I'm getting at? It ruins the trustworthiness of scientific discourse for anyone not a scientist. And that's an enormous problem.

You don't judge the the paper based on how it's being discredited. You try your best to judge the paper on it's own merits. If you lack the knowledge/information to do so, then you obviously have to live with the fact that your opinion on the matter may not necessarily reflect what is true. It's a tradeoff many of us make considering we can't be experts in everything. If it's something you truly believe in and want a better opinion on...then you have to spend time on doing research into it.

In this case the poster tried to use fancy title, but found that it didn't work satisfactorily.

> The weight of people -- supposedly credible scientists -- that they were able to bring to bear to speak against him calls into question effectively every controversial scientific finding.