“This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

Years ago, like 1999 or so, I chaired a Linux conference. The Usenix people wanted me to fold Linux into Usenix and thought (probably mistakenly) that I could bring those people to Usenix.

I said sure on condition: all papers are blind reviewed going forward. No authors, nothing that could identify the authors in the papers until they are accepted.

Usenix flat out refused. Which sort of backs up what this guy is saying. Sad state of affairs.

> 4 papers in a second lab since 2013

Out of those 4 papers in his postdoc lab, two are reviews[0,1] and one is a peer commentary[2], so only the second-author paper I linked before counts as original research.

Similarly, one of his (three) first-author publications from his PhD lab is also a review[3]. He does have two first-author publications from that lab, including one in PNAS[4], but neither of them seem to have been cited that much. In any case, you can't coast on your PhD publication record once you've been a postdoc for several years.

0: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12315/abstra...

1: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2014.00...

2: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21111208

4: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/E84.long

> The editor later proceeded to explain to us why he was inquiring about the reputation of these scientists: "I'm asking to make sure that I accept articles from reputable people. Because you see, at , we want to do real science, not Richard-Dawkins-type science." I remember discreetly crying for an hour that night at the conference's bar, not because that man was unjustifiably mean to one of the most intelligent scientists in the world, but because I had come to the realization that our system of scientific publication was governed by people who have no idea what knowledge is.

It's not just the people governing it. It's the system itself: you are vetted by the only people who understand what you write - the other members of your own little tribe. The editor is not supposed to understand what he publishes, he just asks the opinion of your colleagues, anonymizes slightly the responses (you can still tell who's who by their style) and gives them to you so you can reply. Afterwards the music starts again, you switch chairs and it's your turn to review your peer's article. Is there any wonder why this lead to heaps of useless research and widespread enhanced interrogation of meaningless data?

And no, Richard Dawkins is not "one of the most intelligent scientists in the world", he's just somebody you like and you extended your character judgment to every aspect of his work because you took the same shortcut as that editor: he's in your opinion one of the good ones. And your opinion is that of someone using Facebook as a blogging platform ;-)

I don't really see, what people mean when they "agree" or "disagree" with this article and the likes of it. Aside of expressing his own disappointment the author points out what is wrong with the academic research, that's true. But point out what is wrong, though isn't useless, is a lot easier than suggest (even pretty lousy) better alternative.

It's easy to imagine how everyone should be free to explore whatever he wants in his own free time, with his own money, at his own home lab (although even this isn't true, because currently even the most basic stuff needed for research in chemistry or biology is illegal to freely buy and sell, as it can be used to produce drugs or bombs or because of some other "national security" bullshit). But what the author is talking about isn't his own time and money — it's expecting to be provided with all stuff he needs for research and for him to live and prosper. And if someone is about to give you all that, your promise that you'll discover something great eventually isn't really enough for him. Quite understandably so. So ideally he would like to make sure that you, both: won't use all money and lab equipment that's given to you to smoke crack and do nothing; and that you are actually able to discover something great. Which, I guess, even you yourself won't promise, because you don't know.

So, in fact, even with all that bureaucracy we cannot have any guarantees. And author wants for the system not only to work, but to work without putting too much pressure on him and his colleagues. How he imagines that? He doesn't explain clearly enough.