[taylorius]

"So preoccupied are they with their own prestige, papers and grants they seem like broken-in domestic animals."

Absolutely this. It's their predisposition to be preoccupied with unworldly things, that's why they became academics. They want to be left alone to do their research, and hopefully they make some new discoveries now and again. That doesn't really fly these days though - because being left alone is incompatible with being measured and recorded every waking second, which is the fetish of our age. But if you want to be left alone, you probably don't like confrontation, and sooner or later you will be doing the bidding of those that do.