Making a significant contribution to your field used to be a reasonable requirement for a Ph.D. However, we are churning out more and more Ph.Ds, and there just

Making a significant contribution to your field used to be a reasonable requirement for a Ph.D. However, we are churning out more and more Ph.Ds, and there just aren't that many new discoveries to be made. This is creating a pressure to create more and more splintered fields, and more and more useless publications that nobody will ever read. Furthermore the academic system uses publication to measure the value of professors or researchers, creating yet more useless crap published every year. Only changing the incentives can improve the situation and it seems academia left to its own devices never will. Maybe it's time for governments to take a more active role in basic research again. Maybe we need more "patent clerk" jobs where people have time to think without having to chase structured research grants.