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It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters.

Many professions have tool/skill requirements that are not related to that profession on a strict sense, but are still necessary to do the job properly.

When I learned engineering we were taught how to draw diagrams by hand and write in a technical font. Computer code, for many science fields, is like diagrams but for theories.




> It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters.

And I'd say that illustrates my point even better! A scientist needs to know how to write a paper, but that doesn’t make them a great author. When they aim to write a book, they should get help from a professional publisher. Both tasks require writing text, but a book is very different from a paper and requires heaps of additional training and knowledge that scientists usually don’t need to have.


> but that doesn’t make them a great author

This is also widely considered a huge issue in academia. The dissemination is so bad that a lot of great research is never read by others.

Academia is not a business. They barely can sustain themselves, therefore, they need to do things themselves. It is though to be a physicist. Mostly because you, besides being a great physicist, also need to be a good programmer and a good author.


It depends on what you consider a core skill. One has to specialize; that means leaving secondary tasks to others.


This is only true for systems where comparative advantage applies. Academia is not one of these places (as they explicitly don't want to be a part of the economy, which I understand).




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