Both lose out to the media?

He's got a point but it doesn't really apply to science and research (including research degrees like PhDs), just to academia. The problem is the chap with a gender studies degree who calls themselves a researcher.

 

When you do an actual research degree, a lot of what gets drummed into you are data collection and analysis methods, not blind belief in the peer review process. You're also taught on how to critically analyse peer reviewed literature by questing their methods/interpretations. It's literally the opposite of what this gentleman is saying.

 

What he's talking about, the blind belief in existing literature, is designed for lower levels of education - that's not research/science. The idea behind this is that these people aren't qualified to question the existing body of research yet and it's safer for them to blindly believe peer reviewed literature than to get their information from less credible sources.

 

The reason this translates into a problem in society today is because more and more people are getting low level degrees where they're taught to blindly believe credible sources and dismiss anything else despite all reason. So you have uneducated people who use illogical heuristics to rationally interpret things arguing with these lightly educated people who read the opposite in peer reviewed papers (or more commonly in a news article that quotes a peer reviewed paper). The uneducated people tell the educated people to use common sense (i.e. their illogical heuristics), and the educated people know they're wrong but are too stupid to make a cogent argument as to why so they use the appeal to authority, i.e. "this peer reviewed paper says you're wrong".