In Elbonia people have to play a game to stay in academia.
Every year you have to accumulate enough points.
The main source of points are publications. But they're not valued based on the gravitas of your writing, rather than which publisher is willing to publish. And these valuation seems to be random. Senior people will often offer to open doors to younger reserchers in exchange for their name to be put in their papers. Stealing someones ideas is not even the goal as is getting more points.
I have no idea how this translates to other countries, but as someone who - with one or two different choices in my youth - could easily end up as a sociology scholar, and who has a lot of friends who chose that path, I'm deeply flabbergasted.
A young naive version of me seen academia as polar opposite of working for evil bigco, but the reality that the amount of politics and backroom scheming is just mind boggling.
Its as if one can't escape human nature when environment has wrong goals set for rewards. The fact that 'more noble' goals may be pursued doesn't matter that much in long run.
Every year you have to accumulate enough points. The main source of points are publications. But they're not valued based on the gravitas of your writing, rather than which publisher is willing to publish. And these valuation seems to be random. Senior people will often offer to open doors to younger reserchers in exchange for their name to be put in their papers. Stealing someones ideas is not even the goal as is getting more points.
I have no idea how this translates to other countries, but as someone who - with one or two different choices in my youth - could easily end up as a sociology scholar, and who has a lot of friends who chose that path, I'm deeply flabbergasted.
A young naive version of me seen academia as polar opposite of working for evil bigco, but the reality that the amount of politics and backroom scheming is just mind boggling.