I think a good thing to assume is that when you work for someone, the product is not your product, but theirs, and the customers are not your customers, but theirs.
The simple truth is that science is a branch of entertainment industry. It’s part of the bread-and-circuses program funded by the US government. That’s all there is to it.
If science were solely funded by private entities, the situation would be different. (And that includes private grants, whose sole purposes is not to make profit, but to fund fundamental science. Still, they should be private. There should be many of them. And they should compete for private donations of their sponsors by demonstrating regular quality control. When you have a monopoly, the product always sucks, compared to a non-monopoly alternative. Basic economics.)
It’s not that the paper itself is verbose. You’re expected to write a book in a paper. You’re supposed to give a full story, with beginning, middle, and end, with villains and heroes, with a successful invasion, a dynasty change, a civil war, and a period of peace, with the beginning of a colonization prospects. I had a perfectly fine study that had only electrophysiology. Suddenly, it had to include molecular biology. And pharmacogenomics. And epigenetics. And behavior… with administration of anxiolitic drugs. WTF?..
>Economic historian Niall Ferguson beautifully describes fractional reserves as one of the greatest innovations of humankind in Ascent of Money. The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive.
That doesn’t make any sense. Runs and crashes are an important part of the free market, keeping banks in reign. Fractional reserve banking would be impossible or very limited if runs and crashes were allowed to happen. This would result in non-inflationary currency, improved value of savings, and decreased volatility of the markets (extreme booms followed by extreme crashes and long periods of unemployment due to constant reallocation of resources in the society).
“The marine guard on duty was about to tell her the pretty, neatly dressed woman that the embassy was closed when she handed him her passport. He blanched…”
From what? Her name was Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva. “Iosifovna” is not that an uncommon patronymic because “Iosif” is not that an uncommon a name.
Couldn't a Soviet international passport contain the names of parents as well? I am sure the domestic passport had that information.
For everyone in Soviet Union near the major population centers, a domestic passport was necessary. And for instance any "enemy of the people" (as defined by section §58 of Soviet penal code) status was recorded in not only the passport of the said enemy, but also his/her children's passports.
The Soviets maintained strict control over their passports, usually confiscating them at exit points and returning them right before re-entry, so a Soviet passport would be very uncommon and alarming.
Not pursuing a project that’s too risky, is not using the latest tools, and might not get you published in Cell/Science/Nature is all about scientific curiosity. Please. Such b/s.
Every single Ph.D. on my data science team has pretty much said the same thing (independently). The way I put it: Academic science is a branch of the entertainment industry in a socialist sub-economy.
