A hundred years ago and more, Universities (particularly in Europe) prided themselves on how different their ideas and research programs were from other Univers

A hundred years ago and more, Universities (particularly in Europe) prided themselves on how different their ideas and research programs were from other Universities studying the same subject matter. No doubt the cost of travel and communication made this inevitable, but it was regarded as a high virtue. Now cognitive herding and intellectual fashion is all. Our centrally-planned science funding programs are a very big reason why.