Educated Blowback

The shooting down in huntsville demonstrates the pressure cooker that modern education has become. It is no longer about learning and all about the tenure track - application of ideas to make the university money. The edge of knowledge is perilously unstable. Especially when the facts that the knowledge is based upon get fuzzy.

Tenure is a pathetic concept. The publish or perish mentality is a jump through the hoops process that punishes free thinkers. The gatekeepers on the university side require that you fit square pegs into round holes - conform the thought into agreement with your colleagues. Peer review is the ultimate confirmation that you think properly enough - your ideas are acceptable to the established class.

Then, they change the rules on you and you don't get tenure, because they think you think weird. They lead you on to own your work and then they back out on the deal. Of course, it goes both ways - often individuals get tenure and immediately abandon their research altogether. Tenure is the carrot that protects you in their game - but you never are there when you are playing their game.

Not that there are any formal ethics involved. I watched a person get a $2M NSF grant and not get tenure in the same week. The fact that somebody snapped is not surprising - the pseudo-elite class has just realized that the game is turned. Duh. This is the university system that we trust will teach our children something. The body of knowledge is not what they say - it is what it is. To learn is to teach and to teach well is to learn. Profit has nothing to do with the process.

No complaining with-howdt providing a solution. This ONRRI scientist is working on a multiversity of tasks through NWETI. I like to play with the water.