I wrote a whole book about perverse incentives in academia, but I am not sure there is much we can do other than do more EA work.
At the end of the day, researchers try to publish in the best journals they can because that’s where the money and prestige is. They will tend to work on whatever topics are sexy because that’s what it takes to publish.
Why do some topics become sexy and others not? For instance, why is it something that doesn’t matter at all—such as splitting the millionth hair on the definition of some term in public reason theory—will get in PPA, but if Peter Singer writes an argument about how to actually save a million lives, it won’t? I don’t know.
But the best we can do is do the work we think is valuable and make the best case for it. If we’re lucky, it’ll become sexy and others will have an incentive to do more of it too.
I wrote a whole book about perverse incentives in academia, but I am not sure there is much we can do other than do more EA work.
At the end of the day, researchers try to publish in the best journals they can because that’s where the money and prestige is. They will tend to work on whatever topics are sexy because that’s what it takes to publish.
Why do some topics become sexy and others not? For instance, why is it something that doesn’t matter at all—such as splitting the millionth hair on the definition of some term in public reason theory—will get in PPA, but if Peter Singer writes an argument about how to actually save a million lives, it won’t? I don’t know.
But the best we can do is do the work we think is valuable and make the best case for it. If we’re lucky, it’ll become sexy and others will have an incentive to do more of it too.