Am an academic too. I don't find this to be common knowledge, but a common misconception. Would like to see a citation

It's also common knowledge that even comparing the academic workings of two sub fields is non-trivial

But reproducibility is essential for science, and it has been discussed on HN articles frequently in the past few years that this is very difficult nowadays. Let alone the maligned incentives for funding academia (you are biased to have “big breakthroughs” that catch headlines so you can get more funding, rather than getting out the truth), etc.

Just take a look at this search query for “academia” on HN:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> in the past few years that this is very difficult nowadays.

I strongly disagree. It has always been as difficult as today (if not more), it's just that these days were aware of it.

HN is full of armchair polemicists and contrarians (on academia I am not one of those, but am for other matters), so I wouldn't consider that an unbiased sample.

It's not though. And for a topic such as this where people in academia are going to be obviously biased, citation is all the more important.