> things that serve the preferred narrative get almost zero scrutiny, whether that's a paper or a hiring decision

I ran into the opposite end of that, with some research receiving a lot of pushback, just because some results (that weren't being disputed) from a publicly available source (that wasn't being questioned) showed something that violated a narrative. It was clear that if our results showed the right thing there would have been no problem.

Repeated pattern that I observe in academia:  

1) things that serve the preferred narrative get almost zero scrutiny, whether that's a paper or a hiring decision.   

2) the people responsible for scrutiny rarely pay a cost for their negligence when it's found out, though they reap the rewards of pushing the narrative before it's found out

Happened at my previous institution when I was there.  Happening again in the Arday case.

SimpleStacker

The left is trying to reframe the Jason Arday affair as a witch hunt in which a racist media and a jealous professor hounded him to suicide. However, it was Cambridge University that failed, not those that sought the truth.

Education

Politics_And_Law

By Lipton Matthews
> The left is trying to reframe the Jason Arday affair as a witch hunt in which a racist media and a jealous professor hounded him to suicide. However, it was Cambridge University that failed, not those that sought the truth.