[nickthemagicman]

It's interesting to think though, that government funding has produced nearly every single form of medicine we have, it funded einstein, it was indirectly responsible for the internet.

The problem is that you have to pay a bunch of parasites to support the few who are actually advancing the human race.

[yetanotherphd]

I am about to finish my PhD, and you clearly state the difference between my view of academia and the author's. While I agree with most of the things the author mentioned, and they are a large part of why I will not be going into academia once I graduate, I also recognize that academics acknowledge theses problems and try to mitigate them.

It is useless to complain about problems without giving a solution. Maybe, as you imply, the current situation is the least bad possible. I think that there is at least room for improvement when it comes to sharing of data and reproducibility, and I plan to work on reducing the technical barriers to both of these things. However, I don't have a solution to the social problem of how to rank academics and how to prevent academics from colluding in order to artificially raise their ranking.

[irollboozers]

It's inefficient and creates negative externalities.

[andreasvc]

Inefficient as compared to what?

[irollboozers]

Private funding, industrial innovation, etc.

Subsidized infrastructure does not practically promote risky endeavors. It's created the side effects mentioned in the original article.

[andreasvc]

It may be more inefficient, but it funds basic research without a short-term payoff, or even a suggestion of long-term payoff.