I hear this argument all the time that people in academia are not there "for the money" and therefore, so the implication, you can trust them. It's true in the sense that academics didn't chose their profession to become rich-rich. But it's untrue in the sense that they want to keep their job because most of them haven't learned anything else. They have very strong economic incentives to want to keep their job, even though it won't make them super rich, they probably have a cozy position. And that is why they exaggerate the relevance of their work and ignore shortcomings, because the show has to go on, they need the next grant, the next job, they need to publish the next paper. No, you cannot trust them to be honest about the relevance of their work, and for the most part you can't trust them to be honest about their colleagues work either, because their income depends on what their colleagues think about them.