There’s a big flap going around about some university president not properly citing the papers of others in her own papers. People who don’t like her are making a big deal about it, and people who don’t like the people who don’t like her are looking for similar academic status crimes in the work and claims of these opponents.
This is only what I’ve gathered from a cursory glance, but it seems like the predictable ad absurdum that academia reduces to.
I’d be lying if I said I’m not a bit entertained by this. I think the status conferred by academia is for scoundrels and fools. I think the whole academic publishing world is a cowardly excuse to escape from doing real writing, real research, and real persuasion. I think citations are silly.
The descending spiral of nitpicking over paper prestige is both funny and inevitable. Live by the paper, die by the paper cut.
Published papers are the ultimate symbol to an academic that their work is Very Serious. The more publications in peer reviewed journals, the more Very Serious you are.
The best part about being Very Serious is that no one reads your work.
The average academic paper is read by something like six people. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen studies to prove it! (See what I did there).
And the odd thing about the current paper tiger fight is that no one seems to be talking about the actual ideas or arguments in these works, only whether they followed the proper citation rules or were “original”. It’s almost as if everyone involved knows the papers themselves are unimportant. It is, of course, Very Serious to commit a breech of paper protocol. Even (perhaps especially) when the paper itself is utterly unserious.
I doubt any of this will have the Very Serious consequences on the broader world that those involved imply. Hopefully it does remind a few normal people how silly academia really is.