Scholarship and Buddhism What role if any does academic scholarship play in Buddhism? Should Buddhists be concerned with what scholars say, or can we safely ignore them? How should we resolve conflicts between tradition and academia?

For specific conflicts I can cite some of my own work. See for example my discovery that karma and dependent arising are mutual contradictory: See Does Karma Break the Rules? and Sarvāstivāda Approach to the Problem of Action at a Temporal Distance. I have subsequently discovered that Nāgārjuna also thought so (MMK 17.1-6). Or my discover that all theories of karma are internally inconsistent: ; or the conflict between metaphysics and morality; or the assertion made by Sean Carroll that no afterlife of any kind is possible (including rebirth).
One of my teachers explicitly warned me: do not put too much trust in books written by Buddhist scholars unless they were authorized to teach by a lineage.

In hindsight, having attained "independence of others in regards to Buddha's message", I now see why: Buddhist texts are ambiguous enough that correct interpretation of the points made (as opposed to the literal meaning) requires understanding of Buddhist path as a whole, in context of personal practice -- what's known as "ground, path, fruition".

Back when I was a baby-Buddhist, I used to study all kinds of materials, written by both practicing teachers and scholars alike. Now I see that most of the monographs that focused primarily on translation have been pretty useful, while those that ventured into analysis and elaboration were mostly a waste of time.

Not that translation is quite possible without some measure of interpretation. But there seems to be a difference between following a preexisting text and following your own train of thoughts. If you think about it, the purpose of writing is very different between the two cases. A realized teacher does not write to express his or her understanding. That's not the goal. A teacher writes in order to "deliver" the students (professional slang for "to get them to Realize"). Whereas a scholar writes to explore and explain a particular thread of reasoning they discovered that seems to explain Buddhist artifacts in a cohesive and logically consistent manner.

It is not unheard of for a scholar to slip into metaphysics (how things supposedly are) as opposed to soteriological methodology (how to achieve the Goal in practice). The tradition refers to this difference as "Buddha-eye" vs. "Dharma-eye". Buddha-eye is the enlightened perspective. The elements of it may or may not be helpful to a given student at a given point in time. Whereas Dharma-eye is the perspective presented to student by the teacher, whose concerns as I said above, are primarily didactic.

Now, don't get me wrong, many lineages have professional scholars within the tradition. "Traditional" does not always equate with "sloppy" you know. I've known of teachers in both Theravada and Mahayana schools who did care about careful choice of words, precise phrasing, and clear reasoning. It is just that in the world of realized teachers conveying information is always secondary to the real objective. To entertain you with a metaphor, not every student can handle pure spirit, so teacher ought to mix in the additives according to student's capacity. Such additive, known as upaya or skilfull mean -- basically a useful simplification -- is something non-existent in the work of a pure scholar.

Let's not assume scholarly works are 100% truth either. I've seen so many cases of misrepresenting evolution of Mahayana as progressive loss of the original meaning -- that every time I see a new one I don't even cringe anymore :)

I'm telling responsibly, unless one clearly sees that elusive Truth the Buddha has found under the Bodhi tree, one should be very careful making assumptions about a particular Buddhist school or individual teacher being authentic or a "mere religion".

To conclude this post which is already getting too long, the answer to your question I'm afraid is "it depends". The further the scholar is from putting the teaching to his or her personal practice, the likelier they are to misunderstand what Buddhism is really about, the more they're prone to skewing the message, the less we can trust them. The more the scholar is also a practitioner, the more credibility they can have in our eyes. After all, the proof is in the pudding - and how can you trust a cook who's never tried his own recipe?