Adam Mastroianni writes about the declining trust in scientific institutions:

I, too, would like to beat the charlatans and the terrorists, which is why I want to do better than, “Don’t trust those guys—they lack the proper accreditation!” If that’s all you got, people shouldn’t trust you. Instead of arguing from expertise, you should use your expertise to make better arguments.

As much as I would like to proclaim that this was my thinking all along, and that institutional decay was why I went for medical residency before completing a PhD, well, I can’t — it was a wholly different set of reasons. But it seems to have been a good decision, so I’ll allow myself a pat on the back.