Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's all nice in theory, but what's the compelling empirical evidence for corporate science vs academic research? A professor might conversely argue the open nature of scholarship and freedom of inquiry as being essential to basic science, and capitalist businesses fundamentally cannot provide that. So it goes back to empirical support. And last I checked, companies still need a pool of trained PhDs to choose from,…
Elsewhere in the thread makes plenty of cases for corporate advances, even (or perhaps especially?) in the 20th century with e.g. Bell Labs et al. I think the empirical results are pretty good for corporate science. As for 'needing' PhDs, I'm not sure. Having some can be convenient, yes, but in many cases not necessary. In some fields the only way to get caught up (i.e. no corporation will train you directly) may be…
Further, since your original position was strongly that academia is useless, it is your onus to back up the implication that PhDs are not (generally) needed/useful, and using "well hmm, not sure if absolutely necessary" logic is fallacious and clouds the issue.