I think this comment is spot on. In particular, > I think people are hesitant to over-criticise academia. is a message to people here. Of course, there's all

I think this comment is spot on. In particular, > I think people are hesitant to over-criticise academia. is a message to people here. Of course, there's all the "anti-global warming, intelligent design flat earther republicans" who have always criticized academia, but that's not what you're talking about (I think). I think you mean that people here - i.e. relatively educated, orthodox liberals for the most part - should really start to look hard at academia. I'm someone with a traditional academic pedigree (double major in Econ + Math from MIT, most of my friends have PhDs) but I, too, am growing increasingly wary of much published research. For example, there's this eye-opening blog post[0] by Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics at Columbia who collaborates on a lot of psychology research, about the problem of bad statistics in research in psychology. There's this [1] famous paper by the Fed about problems of replication in what I studied, economics. Or how the NIMH "is re-orienting its research away from DSM categories".[2] And then there's the endless pop-science ideas that show up and get shot down like Power Pose, Air Rage, or Learning Styles. Or the constantly changing recommendations on nutrition. I don't really take for granted anymore that academia is generally working towards greater understanding of the world. It's an imperfect system that has done some incredible things, but it definitely is dealing with some serious issues at the moment. I hope that initiatives like journals for null results, changes in the way grants are apportioned (like in this posted article), etc, can put it back on track. [0] http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/ http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-he... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015083pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2... [2] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2...