ALT Greetings, anonymous professor, > The most dangerous thing in an academic career, Talia, is not inadequate research, as one might think. It is antagonizing the seniors of your field, rocking the boat, stirring drama. That is not taken kindly. First of all, thank you for your honesty. It is rare that you get such a direct glimpse into how a field works from inside--certainly, anonymity has helped here. As someone who has enjoyed a relatively successful career working on programming languages in the industry, I have a question that I think you may be able to answer. I was under the impression that the goal of academic research is the pursuit of knowledge. If, as you say, the most dangerous thing in academic research is not conforming to your superiors, rather than performing inadequate research, then that impression seems to be mistaken. In this case, why should my taxes fund academic research? -- Yours, Catherine "whitequark"