Why academics should have a duty of truth telling

In this article, I advocate that university education has at its core a mission to enable its communities of scholars (staff and students) to make judgements on what can be trusted, and that they, themselves, should be truth-tellers. It is about society being able to rely upon academic statements, avoiding deliberate falsehoods. This requires trust in oneself to make those judgements; an obligation to do so; and the courage to speak out when such judgements might be unpopular, risky or potentially unsafe. I suggest it should be a duty placed on academics to be truth-tellers and to educate potentially gullible others in what it is to have worthy and reliable self-trust in their own judgements.