There is a lot of discussion about the validity of science right now.

Researchers talk endlessly about how to make results “more valid,” how to fix problems, and how to improve the system.

But here is what I actually think.

It is not about “bad apples.”

It is almost never about that.

The real issue is culture.

And culture often comes down to one or two people inside a community who stress performance above all else. Those one or two people create tension. They make others feel lesser than. They make you feel like you are the problem. And then everything starts to bend around that pressure.

This is true everywhere.

Every organization. Every department. Every field.

You can feel it when the conversation becomes only about outcomes:

number of citations, number of papers, number of grants.

All lagging indicators. All terrible predictors.

My field in strategy does this constantly.

It is completely wrong.

And it has been wrong for a long time.

A lot of this came from the old Jack-Welch-style management thinking of the 1980s. That mindset seeped everywhere. It made people believe outcomes were all that mattered. Just hit the number. Hit the target. Hit the metric.

But if you look at the research coming out of the systems-dynamics world at MIT — the Sterman group especially — the story is always the same:

When you focus on outcomes, everything erodes.

Eventually it all falls apart.

Because outcomes are not the thing that matters.

What matters is whether people feel safe.

What matters is whether people feel supported.

What matters is whether there is unconditional kindness in the room instead of fear.

You fix culture, you fix science.

And none of that starts with performance.