Trends in research spending over time: American proliferation of doctoral degrees: Facetiousness unbound: Huh. It's almost as if the technological competition between the US and USSR had been won and 20 years of military-grade innovation spooled out into busywork. What is the correct protocol for including peer reviews that I have done in a CV? How will you know you're an academic if you don't rub dicks with other academics? Especially when everyone making over a buck a year has a master's degree minimum?
Peer review has a misleadingly long history, conveniently dated to when the Royal Society started asking for anonymous reports in the 1830s on whether some papers should be published in its Philosophical Transactions. But the use of peer review was patchy at best until the 1970s, when it became the norm at all kinds of scientific journals. Indeed the journal Nature, for many the pinnacle venue for publishing science, didn’t start peer review until 1973. In the short span of time since the 1970s, peer review has now grown from an occasional things into a beast that is devouring the time and energy and careers of scientists.
Interesting that since the end of Vietnam the number of non-science PhDs has been relatively stable. I was under the impression that those had increased, too. The graph of the science PhDs reminds me so much of Player Piano, Vonnegut's first novel (I think).
I would hypothesize that remuneration of technology/engineering Ph.Ds outside of academia kicks the shit out of the remuneration of science Ph.Ds. Not only that, the number of firms requiring Ph.Ds for their c-suites has contracted through consolidation. Academia, on the other hand, has erupted: The whole point of tenure is you don't have to teach as much anymore, right? So what are you going to do with your free time to justify your existence? Peer review works. Note that I have less education than almost all of my friends. I have less education than my parents. I have less education than my relatives. I evaluated early and often that an advanced degree was not going to serve me. But then, I also knew that if I couldn't support myself 100% the minute I matriculated I was utterly and totally fucked. Half the population of the United States doesn't support themselves anyway so they have a different perspective.