What does "publication" mean in an Internet Age when anyone can publish anything?
If you mean "vetted by a tiny handful of fallibly-human organizations such as Nature and Cell who may or may not decide to accept your paper regardless of its actual merit and based mostly on how 'hip' the research is," well then we're back to the hazing/cliquey-clusterfuck thing again.
"Grants" seem equivalent to "angel investments" in the startup world... which seem a lot saner, btw.
Publication means peer-reviewed and scholarly. Yes, a publication in Nature, Cell, Science, NEJM, etc. opens doors, but so do publications in discipline specific journals (like JACS). What matters is that one's papers be read and cited.
The system is far from perfect, but I don't think you'll find anyone in academia saying otherwise. I think of it being like Churchill's quote about democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the others that were tried.
If you mean "vetted by a tiny handful of fallibly-human organizations such as Nature and Cell who may or may not decide to accept your paper regardless of its actual merit and based mostly on how 'hip' the research is," well then we're back to the hazing/cliquey-clusterfuck thing again.
"Grants" seem equivalent to "angel investments" in the startup world... which seem a lot saner, btw.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/09/10/gre...