Curate, connect, and discover
Don't mind me, just gotta put a little theory about gravity falls out into the world now that it's been revived
WARNING: minor Book of Bill spoilers
So in the BoB and the 3rd journal, Ford mentions that he needs to destroy the journals, but turns back on it because of "the importance of his research". However, he could have just torn out the pages about summoning Bill and the portal and burned those, and the rest of his research would have been safe
So why didn't he?
You could argue that it was because he couldn't reason through his growing paranoia and admittedly delusional state, and that is valid considering everything Bill was putting him through at that point - but it also would have been one of the first things to cross his mind, right??? He'd already said that he was planning to dismantle the portal, but was putting it off for some reason - again, something that didn't make any sense considering how terrified he was that Bill would be able to start it up again.
In the BoB, it talks about how Bill tormented Ford to try to get him to open the portal again - physical, psychological, and emotional torture on top of very real threats and gaslighting. There was also a point where Bill showed Ford that he could take full control of Ford's brain, turning off memories (such as his own name) at will, and Ford would be completely unable to tell that the memories were gone until Bill brought it up
So, here's my theory: Bill knew that Ford was planning to burn the journals/the pages about the portal, which were his only chance to enter the third dimension. He couldn't let that happen, so he fucked around in Ford's head - planted a few ideas, erased a plan or two, and suddenly, Ford was much more concerned about his research surviving than he was a couple hours ago. Concerned to the point that he wanted to hide his journals rather than destroy them. Basically, Ford being so protective of his research was due to more of Bill's manipulations in his mind that he never found out about. It's the only reason I could think of about why he went from 100% ready to burn the journals to being willing to physically attack Stan for trying to do just that
Anyways, that's all, figured I should get my theory out in the world now that canon actually backs it up a bit more than before BoB came out