Academia=squabbling over ideas?

juillet
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:34:30 +0000

Research (and scholarship) is the process of building upon what other scholars have found and either supporting that evidence with replications, branching into related fields with empirical evidence, or refuting what other scholars have found by countering it with empirical evidence. It’s not a “squabble” because a squabble implies a cacophony of voices that inspires some kind of nonsensical feud. Academics don’t generally feud - if they disagree with something they use scientific evidence to counteract that (or if they’re in the humanities, their equivalent of evidence) and publish it somewhere.

I’d say the only thing I’d add to OP’s summation is that Professor W-Z’s discoveries aren’t independent. They may “research and research” or find some amazing discovery, but likely their discovery is based upon the discoveries of many researchers before them.