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Most, not all... The real problem is vetting the "how" and dissemination of information. A non-academic might have no idea how to present their findings through
by heurist 11y ago
Most, not all... The real problem is vetting the "how" and dissemination of information. A non-academic might have no idea how to present their findings through journals or conferences, even if their ideas are well-formed and valid. I imagine there would also be strong push-back from academics averse to outside contributors (at least for big changes). What if known benchmarks are insufficient? How will the outsider convince the professionals? There's also a problem of access to literature... journals can be expensive if you aren't getting them for free at a university. There are a lot of free journals online nowadays but they don't always cover everything you might need. It's hard to tell a crank from a genius, but that doesn't mean there are no geniuses hidden away out there.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago>I imagine there would also be strong push-back from academics averse to outside contributors (at least for big changes). No, not really. "We" academics get cliquey because of the intellectual prerequisites to our work, not because we're trying to form a closed conspiracy for domination of the academic world. If someone can demonstrate findings but has unusual institutional affiliations, we'll give them exactly our normal treatment (ie: skepticism in proportion to how thoroughly they're proving our hypotheses wrong, mixed with enthusiasm for having something interesting to talk about).