> But Laughlin hit on a topic that was far more taboo than any of the above. He had the idea that most of the scientists were doing no work at all. They were ac

> But Laughlin hit on a topic that was far more taboo than any of the above. He had the idea that most of the scientists were doing no work at all. They were actually stealing money from the government, just creating all these fraudulent grant applications. I don't think there are that many fraudulent grant applications. Too many eyes and resources at stake. > Laughlin had done a lot of work studying the physics of super-high temperatures (superconductivity and the like), and he once told me that, of the roughly fifty thousand papers written on the subject, maybe twenty-five of them were any good at all. Yes. Inflation in academic research has been around for a while. And nobody's doing anything about it.