[urthor]

Academic politics is something else.

I thought for awhile those guys got lucky and skip office politics.

Then I realize that PhD level IQs + pressure to get into the fancy journals means that the politics is 古典小說 tier.

[seanhunter]

> Academic politics is something else.

There is a famous formulation of this known as Sayre's law[1], which is often stated via the quote "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. That is why academic politics are so bitter," which wikipedia attributes to Charles Philip Issawi.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law

[act_of_dog]

Link didn't work because of the apostrophe. Here's a fixed link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

[kranke155]

I’m advertising, where I work, it’s 100% this

[leemailll]

That's a wonderful sum up. The pettiness often drive you insane, when you read the comments from reviewer 2

[HerculePoirot]

In french academic circles, we use the word "mandarin" to refer to a powerful academic figure.

[simonh]

Cool. In the UK that's used for powerful civil servants.

[daniel-s]

The Chinese translates to, "classical novels," according to Google.

[ovi256]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels

They're about court life and conflict, so of course they're full of court politics and intrigue

[thrdbndndn]

I'm a native Chinese speaker but I have no idea what OP means by "古典小說 tier".

[belinder]

If academic is all politics and favoritism then wouldn't that also apply to the prizes at the top? The people deciding or at least confirming scientific breakthroughs for stuff like nobel prizes must be scientists too, no? So if it's all politics, why are they immune to it?

[dotnet00]

There's plenty of politics and arbitrariness to Nobel prizes (especially in non-science prizes, eg giving Obama or Malala the peace prize), which probably makes it less of an issue that there may be some politicking within the small group of potential laureates since who among them actually wins is relatively arbitrary.

Eg since only 3 people can win a prize, you can have cases like Francois Englert and Peter Higgs winning the prize for the Higgs Boson despite 4 other scientists having published papers on the same thing around the same time, and the scientists at the LHC who actually confirmed its existence.

Similarly, a work can have won a prize, but if one of the authors passes away before the nomination is made, that person misses out on the title.

[nyssos]

> then wouldn't that also apply to the prizes at the top?

It does, but the politics and favoritism is happening within a heavily selected group of very, very competent people. Plenty of people get snubbed for petty reasons, but they get snubbed in favor of others who are also doing Nobel-worthy work.