Definitely not my experience in academia, mostly small mini czardoms who can't stand and won't speak to their competitors. Often engaged in ancient blood feuds with the person two doors down. Add a dash of corruption in publishing and citing each others works while excluding those they disagree with etc.

IMO that's applied Sayre's Law though. And my explanation for that is that the more niche (and therefore fragile) an academic topic gets, the more defensive people are.

I've heard stories of friends working in (say) such a niche part of fluid dynamics that there's two professors and a few dozen PhDs in the entire world who get it, and the professors refuse to work with anyone who ever cited the other in one of their papers.

On the other hand, I've worked as a programmer for molecular neurobiologists who were working on multi-million dollar research projects mapping out all cell types of the brain using single-cell RNA sequencing, and collaboration seemed much more common there.

The stakes don't get much higher than running the country you're from.

EDIT: Also, the city of Groningen elected a city council of young students and put a 24 year old in charge of the city’s traffic and urban development policy. We still brag about being one of he most bike-friendly cities in the country that was the result.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/29/how-groningen...

Yep that’s a great summary of what my wife, a professor, tells me about every day.