[arethuza]

At the end of my time in academia I had become, as one friend put it "hyper cynical". However, this actually made me much better at playing the publications game - pretty much every collaboration with colleagues involved some negotiation over where in the list of authors my name would go.

I left, co-founded a company, moved onto other things and have never regretted leaving academia - I much prefer building things people do use to writing papers about things that people will probably ignore (that being the fate of most academic research).

The only bit about academic life that I wouldn't mind having is the nice juicy final salary pension scheme!

[greendestiny]

Yeah I think the other comments in this thread are extremely optimistic about the nature of academic research. The incentives just don't line up to do great work, its not that its absolutely impossible though. I miss teaching, though I was only never an academic as such, just did a PhD.