This is from a piece that was sent to me today. It is most outrageous paragraph I have read in a long time:
The system of journal editing now existing in our field virtually forces academics to become prostitutes: they sell themselves for money (and a good living). Unlike prostitutes who sell their bodies for money (Edlund and
Korn 2002), academics sell their soul to conform to the will of others, the referees and editors, in order to get one advantage, namely publication. Most persons refusing to prostitute themselves and to follow the demands of the system are not academics: They cannot enter, or have to leave, academia because they fail to publish. Their integrity survives, but the persons disappear as academics. This paper discusses the process forcing persons wanting to pursue a university career to act as intellectual prostitutes (Section II). Intellectual or academic prostitution is defined here as acting against one’s convictions in order to get a reward.
Read more here. The author is Bruno S. Frey, a Swiss economist.
This is hilarious. I almost laughed out loud (if I wasn’t in the library, I would have). It may be *a bit* extreme, but it describes how I sometimes feel as an academic!