> First, people that want to be professors normally do so because they want to steer their research agenda, not repeat what other people are doing without contr

> First, people that want to be professors normally do so because they want to steer their research agenda, not repeat what other people are doing without contribution. If we're talking about weird incentives and academia you hit on one of the worst ones right here, I think, since nothing there is very closely connected to helping students learn. I know that's a dead horse, but it's VERY easy to find reasons that we shouldn't be too closely attached to the status quo. > For every lab doing new work, you’d basically need a clone of that lab to replicate their work. Hell, that's how startup funding works, or market economies in general. Top-down, non-redundant systems are way more fragile than distributed ecosystems. If you don't have the competition and the complete disconnection, you so much more easily fall into political games of "how do we get this published even if it ain't great" vs "how do we find shit that will survive the competition"