I'm optimistic that bad science is on the decline (at least in regards to smart drugs like Modafinil). There's already a number of double blind, placebo controlled, randomized human trials pre-registered for Modafinil research in 2018.
It appears also that the research institutions are figuring out that there's tremendous public interest in Nootropics or smart drugs that can be used by healthy young people to make them happier, healthier and more productive.
This indicates science getting more into the prevention and empowerment business as opposed to just being in the business of treating sick people.
It would be an understatement to say that Modafinil has been thoroughly studied; in total over a thousand pieces of published research on it can be found on Pubmed, with an impressive 580 human research papers in the last 10 years alone.
This infographic summarizes the science that's been done on Modafinil in 2017.
In 2017 alone there were 80 papers published about it but don't worry I'm not going to summarize every single one because a lot of them are not very interesting.
Download Infographic
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1csEg-27IgD06FNpFS0fcTJdaXlXxQ_ZK/view?usp=sharing
Read Article
http://www.limitlessmindset.com/blog/nootropics/125-modafinil-science-2017
