[__x0x__]

I've been both a "toiling in relative obscurity" and "rockstar" scientist. I really didn't mind being the first one, and I don't think my earlier research was necessarily bad, but I was at an undergraduate-focused university where teaching dominated my time, and I did not have the resources to conduct world class research. I am now a soft funded researcher at an R1 and love my new position.

What the author seems to be advocating is some sort of normalization process for the peer review process... it's not entirely clear what she is calling for. I've always advocated for double blind reviews, but it's very difficult for these to work because in small fields such as my own, it's pretty trivial to figure out who wrote the proposal. So it one sense, the rich get richer, but so long as the science that comes out of it is good, so be it! You aren't going to get R1 research done when you have a 3/3 teaching load with no graduate support, that's just life.

I have been on both sides of the review process and I have yet to feel like I was snubbed in my earlier "toiling" days, nor have I, when reviewing, felt compelled to award someone just because they were a "star" - if anything, I might even be more critical when reviewing proposals and papers from "stars". For me, though, I just basically follow the guidelines for evaluating proposals and let the chips fall where they may.

[cantankerous]

You aren't going to get R1 research done when you have a 3/3 teaching load with no graduate support, that's just life.

Amen.

Should also add that the R1 school I did my graduate work at put funded research in front of didactics every time (thanks to state funding cuts, primarily). The students (and their paying families) really had no idea that these priorities even existed. Everybody gunning for tenure (and with tenure) put teaching in the backseat because, like you said, you have to if you want to succeed in research these days. Where I was at, graduate students ended up carrying most of the teaching load...to the detriment of just about everybody else.

[phreeza]

In my experience there is a lot of variance between research fields and even very specific adjacent subfields in how abrasive and star-focussed the process is.

[kurthr]

I have to agree with this. The stories I've heard just don't match my own experience from either the reviewer-reviewee perspective. Chemistry (esp Biochem) seems especially nasty for reasons I don't understand (maybe the money gradient is really steep?), while the engineering and math fields were pretty reasonable.

In math and physics arXiv has made a big difference, and the prime focus is really on making publishing much less influenced by the money-men (Elsevier etc). Fame still has an effect, but when the respect of your peers is most important (few outside even realize what you're working on), that gets tempered by disdain at dumbing-down. Writing for a mass audience and/or high school etc is really hard.