The threat from academia – Tax Research UK

Richard Murphy on developing a fairer and sustainable economy
Posted on March 18 2025
I like this, a lot:

I agree with much that the commentator has to say.
This line stood out for me on where progress comes from:
The finest candle makers in the world could not even think of electric lights.
Of course, they could not. They thought within the paradigm they knew. That is now the curse of the economic and political worlds we now live in. Thinking is required to come from within existing paradigms to be acceptable to academia. That, unfortunately, is why most of those over-exposed to academia (which includes most graduates) will never have, let alone take the risk of having, an original idea.
I admit to feeling more than a little liberated by breaking free.
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I agree with the video that advances often come from the edges of scientific disciplines rather than the centres, although that is not always the case. The enormous collaboration that was necessary to confirm the detection of the Higgs boson, or the detection of gravitational waves, for example, was not fringe science. The failure to detect either of them would have been a major revelation too.
I disagree strongly that peer reviewed papers are academia not science. For sure, you can do science without publishing, but exposing that work to public criticism by publishing is how advances are disseminated and errors and biases are corrected. Referees should be critical, and they can be obstructive, but that is not where the main problem lies. It is in the bureaucratic treadmill of the funding and reward system whose metrics require publication year after year and demands evidence of “impact”. So rather than gambling on reaching for breakthroughs which might take many years to reach fruition, or fail, scientists are rewarded for creeping incremental gradualism that give small results year after year.
It’s all academia though Andrew – and it is all designed to prevent thinking
There is considerable discussion of this topic within the Physics community. Despite much press and public interest about issues such as dark matter, dark energy etc, etc, there have been no major breakthroughs in physics for about 70 years. This is discussed by physics such as Lee Smoljn (“The trouble with physics”) and Sabine Hossenfelder (Lost in Math). Today, Einstein’s breakthrough papers would be most unlikely to be published because he was an outsider with radical ideas.
And this is very much wider than physics.
Essentially academia is set up to produce peer reviewed papers and that is all. Yes, useful stuff also emerges from time to time. If you have lot’s of bright people working they will inevitably produce some useful results. But it’s not a good return o investment; we could, and should, be doing much better. Good results are in spite of academia and not because of it.
Thanks, Tim. We agree. 🙂
John D. Rockefeller set up the General Education Board in 1902 claiming “a desire to improve the educational system”. It was a ruse. He is credited with saying ““I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”
Funding universities followed. This contributed to the privatisation of further education, and the difficulty in criticising knowledge.
Read: “The Dark Truth of the Educational System Shaped by John D. Rockefeller”
https://medium.com/@sofialherani/the-dark-truth-of-the-educational-system-shaped-by-john-d-rockefeller-77bf1b0167dd
Thanks
Oh good for you Richard… and yes, how very true.
I’m reminded of TS Khun and his work, ‘the structure of scientific revolutions’ and just how difficult it is to be able to even ‘think’ outside of the conceptual framework to which we become accustomed – for me, cases in point have been the intellectual capture of my understanding of how money works, by neoliberalism (household finances equal to Fiat currency issuingbstates),(and your work has been especially important in changing my understanding wrt to MMT), and more latterly, breaking away from the materialist conception of the universe towards a much more nuanced view that life, love, joy, spiritualism (and possibly pan psychism) and music cannot be explained simply as the products of a simple causal nexus….!!!
my favourite Kuhn quote is that paradigms shift when the ‘Old Guard” retire or die. He also says, I think, that change often comes quickly, over a short period. That is why I am hopeful about the work of Richard and other people. It may seem they are banging away with little impact but things can change under the surface.
I hope so
This reminds me of the “mantras” in the world of financial advice in that most follow the orthodoxies: –
1. Stocks only go up in the long run. That isn’t true on an individual basis.
2. Bonds are stable and secure. That isn’t true on an individual basis, either.
3. Cash is an awful investment. That is clearly nonsense on an individual basis.
4. Pension drawdown is king. Only because it keeps lots of hands in your pocket.
5. Annuities are terrible things. No, they are not – they are simple and cheap – but they remove hands from your pockets.
Etc. etc.
Agreed
This is one reason why climate academics have not been more forceful and insistent on exposing the climate crisis in fear of losing their jobs for taking an anti-establishment stance.
I suppose scientific breakthroughs have always been subject to pressure from vested interests Galileo onwards .
Academia seems to be becoming a semi privatised industry much of it in the UK funded by overseas students paying high fees, and staffed by academics on insecure contracts , bound to the treadmill of annual publication and , as you say Richard , so many peer reviewers will be invested in received wisdom .
But physics does seem to admit it is in a bit of a mess with dark matter, dark energy, string theory , black holes , with many concepts apparently contradictory etc. In that sense physics does seem to be able to contemplate far-out ideas.
Despite all the academia pressures – some good things will get through.
But economics and politics with their lack of empirical rigour and their real world messiness seem particularly vulnerable to take over by vested interests – especially when funded by Heritage Foundation and the like . Presumably that’s why we have nearly all political parties signed up to ‘balancing the books’,
The problem goes beyond academia. When was the last time supposedly innovative companies like Apple invented anything new? Did they ever? They just took government-developed technology and branded it. Microsoft grows year on year, but when did anything new come out of Microsoft?
Their whole operating system was ‘borrowed’
It is my good fortune to work with recently graduated engineers. My business partner and I spend much of our time trying to get the to think – outside of the box. Sigh.
Oh they are better than me with spreadhseets (anybody is better than me with a spreadsheet) but being able to pull a bunch of ideas together & make it work………..
Brilliant video – thanks for putting it up – brought a smile to my face.
Oh, one other thing, many of the reports & papers I read tend to be circular – referencing one article or another with in turn references other articles – & before you know it – you are back where you started.
So true…
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