Yes, bizarrely, reputation / trust is still the primary foundation of academia from a pragmatic perspective, even though it is the antithesis of science. At least some disciplines can have replication studies cross-culturally. It’s a hard problem to solve; knowledge is inherently a social/shared experience.
Trust is a curious one, it's not the antithesis of science, indeed it's required for science to actually work rather than simply be an idea.
You trust in people, in consistency of physical laws, in coherency of your own mind, in constancy of temporal flow, in so many things because - as the Pyrrhonist refrains - nothing is certain, not even this.
