Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to It's hard to believe you work at a university.

So essentially
Yeti — (archived)

You want to ascribe the exact same signs and symptoms of a failed academic- IE, someone who isn't doing a good job?

Do you want a playing field where everyone is 'special' and everyone gets 'equal time' and no matter how bad their work is, gets published in the top journals, promoted to tenure posts no matter how bad or uninformed their work ?

Essentially what you are doing is saying that the academic process, which (hmmm, interestingly) has worked all these many decades to advance science, research and education is just in this 'special' case the sign of some non-scientifically motivated special conspiracy to 'put down' your little tin heroes?

Yeah, sorry- thats bullshit. Essentially any second-rater could then say he was being marginalized for political reasons.

You think "naive and irresponsible" is harsh? Man, I hear language a thousand times worse than that thrown at conferences and on mailing lists, both to and from 'big names' and field leaders. It does not 'end careers' or etc. I've seen graduate students' work called 'idiotic crap' by top minds in the fields at thesis defenses- and those students go on to tenure track positions at top schools. Its all in how you defend yourself and your work, or explain your work to your critics. at the end of the day, either there is something there and your critics have to accept it regardless of how much they may hate it (IE, it may burn a line of inquiry they have been pushing), or there is nothing there. At which point, you better know how to gracefully concede the argument or you won't last long.

"naive and irresponsible" is a gentle tap compared to what I've seen.

Yeti

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (128 posts)