The excruciating detail here is commendable. The sciences are also very much like this, particularly life sciences, physics and chemistry. The article doesn’t

The excruciating detail here is commendable. The sciences are also very much like this, particularly life sciences, physics and chemistry. The article doesn’t go into it much, but another important question to ask oneself is why are you doing it. The answer, for most students and I daresay most tenured academics, is generally vanity. Putting aside the consequences of this vanity, which may of course include curing cancer and unravelling the nature of the universe, being motivated by vanity will almost always end badly for the individual. A lot of nonsensical academic behaviour (the perverse devotion to prestige, the viciousness, the obviously harmful publish or perish mentality, acquiescing to exploitative closed source publication models) can be explained if you accept academics are motivated mainly by vanity.