[shas3]

This is not about the philosophical debate of luck vs. effort. In my opinion, show-biz vs. academia analogy is not valid (Though there are no Jaden Smith's in academia, I won't use that as a counter-example. Doing so would perpetuate this analogy.). The metrics on which actors are judge are fuzzy and subjective at best, and spurious at worst. Academics, OTOH, (excluding China and a few other offenders) are mostly judged justly- whether in grant applications or in job applications or for tenure.

[robotresearcher]

There are indeed Jaden Smiths in academia. I personally know people who did their first degree in (humanities subject) and got a PhD position in (top 5 world school) doing (in-demand science subject) and followed by a postdoc in a great institution based entirely on their father being very important in the subject.

These people got funded graduate spots in the best departments in the world, beating out others who obtained first-class degrees (4.0 for the North Americans) and worked their entire lives towards this dream.

How does this happen? Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth most important person in your field? A man who has given you important references in the past and may do so again? When this relationship could get you even closer to the Will Smith of your field? This is good old fashioned corrupt nepotism for all the good old fashioned reasons.

Now, these people are both genetically and environmentally predisposed to be much better than average at this work. Sometimes it works out well. It is possible that this is a good outcome for science. But is it fair? It is not.

(Written as a working prof who had no academic connection advantages. I acknowledge that being white, male and having English as a first language was not a a bad place to start from).

[foobarian]

> Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth most important person in your field?

I never witnessed literal nepotism where family relations were involved. But, this definitely does happen when it comes to academic "family"- a famous advisor's "son" or "daughter" usually has a significant edge.