Sayre's Law: Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small

Maybe universities, tenure committees, and funding sources should stop measuring academics by vanity metrics such as H-Index and publication counts. And don't get me started on the tendency toward "minimum publishable units."

That said, abusing power as an editor deserves a special place in hell...

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denverllc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The stakes are pretty large now. You are judged on the number of publications, positions, citations, etc.

It’s not even about philosophical disagreement as much as future career

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Forgeties79 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Corporate KPI-chasing culture ruins everything. “Publish or perish” has hit such an extreme level.

I imagine most academics would gladly not participate in this game if their entire livelihood didn’t depend on it

	▲	sokoloff 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think an awful lot of people would rather receive their livelihood without being subject to measurement.

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azan_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How should they be judged then? Any metric can be gamed. And if it will be kind of qualitative assessment then politics will be 10000x more important. The system is clearly broken but I’m not sure if alternative is not even worse.