> I can tell you that the vast majority of academics are not motivated by money. If that was the case they would move into industry where they could earn signif

> I can tell you that the vast majority of academics are not motivated by money. If that was the case they would move into industry where they could earn significantly more. No, they're motivated by safety. And there's nothing safer than the ivory tower. Academics would work on self-referential research until the end of time if they could get funding for it. They create academia children in a perpetual loop trying their very hardest to avoid life and all its complexities (especially those of people, of which they are ludicrously blind) by living in their theoretical world of nothingness.