There are some truly brilliant minds there. Seriously.
But most of the people who inhabit Academia (I'm talking about the Academics, not the people who just work there like any other job) are hacks.
I've seen many examples of papers that were written based on PhD research that was 5 years old ... and in many cases which was sufficiently out of date as to be worthless without new research to confirm the findings. Follow up research which never happened.
I've seen PhD candidates freaking out because the guys in Maths and Stats told them that their sample sizes were going to have to be X people, which meant that they were going to have to look outside the local University for people to interview. When pointed to the large body of 'civilians' in the local area they refused and instead would arrange to interview students from OTHER Universities. Many Social 'Scientists' still haven't come to terms with the fact that their studies don't apply to the general population because they ONLY interview Uni students.
With people like that infesting Academia like parasites ... it's no wonder that the levels of bias are constantly increasing.
I spent 18 years in Academia.
There are some truly brilliant minds there. Seriously.
But most of the people who inhabit Academia (I'm talking about the Academics, not the people who just work there like any other job) are hacks.
I've seen many examples of papers that were written based on PhD research that was 5 years old ... and in many cases which was sufficiently out of date as to be worthless without new research to confirm the findings. Follow up research which never happened.
I've seen PhD candidates freaking out because the guys in Maths and Stats told them that their sample sizes were going to have to be X people, which meant that they were going to have to look outside the local University for people to interview. When pointed to the large body of 'civilians' in the local area they refused and instead would arrange to interview students from OTHER Universities. Many Social 'Scientists' still haven't come to terms with the fact that their studies don't apply to the general population because they ONLY interview Uni students.
With people like that infesting Academia like parasites ... it's no wonder that the levels of bias are constantly increasing.