One of my theories based on life experience is that many fields do not attract the brightest people to begin with, and consequently many of the ideas from these fields are not pressure-tested enough.
In todays academia, it is basically impossible to fail getting a PhD in many fields provided you are ok being miserable for years at a time. At the same time academia is filled with a ton of bs like publicly funded research being released behind paywalls, professors receiving grants for projects that are already completed, students being denied graduation util their project can be submitted to the highest impact journal possible etc, having to do a long postdoc to get a tenure track position etc...
For smart people that value financial freedom, academia is a terrible option at this point in time.
The current coronavirus fiasco has laid bare the lack of critical thinking in the life-sciences fields.
"One of my theories based on life experience is that many fields do not attract the brightest people to begin with, and consequently many of the ideas from these fields are not pressure-tested enough." very well articulated, i have thought about this many times, basically a lot of physical sciences face this
In todays academia, it is basically impossible to fail getting a PhD in many fields provided you are ok being miserable for years at a time. At the same time academia is filled with a ton of bs like publicly funded research being released behind paywalls, professors receiving grants for projects that are already completed, students being denied graduation util their project can be submitted to the highest impact journal possible etc, having to do a long postdoc to get a tenure track position etc...
For smart people that value financial freedom, academia is a terrible option at this point in time.
The current coronavirus fiasco has laid bare the lack of critical thinking in the life-sciences fields.