[Ostrogodsky]

Young people need to realize that the things we love about science: the uncompromising search for the truth, its international and no-boundaries character, the ability to bow down to evidence, the ambition of the ideas, are just a very distilled fraction (basically the highlights) of a what it is a very mundane, fragile, political human activity, full of petty and lame characters, absurd situations and pathetic developments.

[jjdredd]

> full of petty and lame characters, absurd situations and pathetic developments.

Yeh, I wish I could understand this a few years ago. Pursuit of truth is not the primary goal of many tenure profs it seems.

[DarylZero]

Well there's science and then there are social institutions that undertake science. But science can exist outside the institutions.