William Sjostrom wrote: > > I agree that academia wastes vast resources relative to the goal of seeking > > truth, but I disagree that this implies a market failure, mainly because I > > don't think the ultimate customers fundamentally want truth. In fact, I > > think customers in part want faddism and cults of personality. > > ... Even if we grant that the great bulk of academic publishing is > useless dreck, it does not follow that it is wasteful. .... Grain is > usually shipped on large ships, and is dumped into the holds through large > chutes. A non-trivial amount is lost in the process, ....
I agree that the mere fact that of useless dreck does not imply an overall failure. Even an ideal institution for generating truth would probably generate lots of useless dreck in the attempt to find a few valuable gems. My grounds for believing that there is more waste than can be attibuted to this are based on other sorts of observations, like what I think Alex and Pete have in mind.
