I had a feeling academia was just run a ran by people letting blatant fraud, exploitation and abuse of phd students, stealing during peer-review, and just other forms of plagiarism, fraud, and exploitation slide by. They let it slide by because correcting these things would lead to massive changes in academia that might put them out of jobs.

Every year that feeling becomes more certain. Glad I quit the track in grad school.

I feel terribly for all the incredibly smart and hard working academics that remain honest and try to make it work. They do what they love, otherwise they wouldn't do such intensive work with so much sacrifice.

It is really disheartening too because academia only turns on the "honesty filter" when it comes to minor grad students that pissed off the wrong people. But you can do all this fraud constantly and become president of harvard if you know the right politics.

Dishonest lot. I hope karma is real so they get what is coming to them for taking advantage of people that just love to increase humanity's knowledge.