But even when there are universally trusted parties, such as with medical journals, there is a high prevalence of false claims and careless errors. There seems to not be much incentive to correct those claims. Errors end up in textbooks and committee opinions as well. This is a threat to patient safety.

Sometimes a mere hypothesis supported by no evidence whatsoever gets cited so many times it becomes established as a “fact.” Sometimes something actually true gets cited so many times it becomes distorted in a process similar to a game of telephone. Requiring each claim to reference original research would help solve this. It appears people aren’t doing this out of laziness.

Because of the information quality problem in medical literature, 7 years ago I wrote in a Word doc that there needed to be a mechanism by which claims have to be backed financially. There needs to be financial incentive for people to publish correct information and financial incentive for people to correct errors. This is extremely important in medical literature because patient safety is on the line. When clinical decisions are made based on false information, preventable harm can occur.

There is also a lot of potential here for this system to enable people without formal degrees to become established as experts. This could lower financial barriers to expert status, potentially lowering the cost of obtaining formal degrees, as they would be less necessary. The cost of formal education is ridiculous considering everything learned in a college education could be taught to oneself. It is also easy for a layperson to know more than practicing medical doctors by simply reading all their literature.