Nice one... you should have been a coauthor of this paper: Ten ironic rules for non-statistical reviewers by Karl Friston.

Terry Tao always amazes me with the scope of his knowledge. Contributions in mathematical areas as diverse as random matrix theory, harmonic analysis, and number theory. I look forward to what comes next!

You act as though Ph.D. students aren't being advised and guided by very experienced people. And perhaps we have different thresholds for what a good Ph.D. student is. There are fields (like mine), where good students go straight from grad school to faculty positions. This wouldn't be possible if those grad students weren't doing important work. But again, I'm curious what kind of field you work in where Ph.D. students are so useless as to have almost no meaningful impact on their field until finishing.

I've never been to a major research institution that didn't subscribe to the back catalog of journals from the field I work in. And I'm curious what field you work in -- in my field, *good* Ph.D. students submit to the top tier journals. Good work is good work, and it doesn't matter whether the Ph.D. is finished.

All of the important research universities have subscriptions. And people not from major research universities tend not to do much interesting scientific work. There are a few exceptions to that, of course, but the paywall has relatively no impact on the number of good-quality citations you would get. Having a large number of citations from low-quality work isn't really that helpful in building your status in the field. There are, of course, fields where citation counts are king, and I'm glad not to be a part of one of those. That being said, I think all funding agencies should move toward the NIH open access policy, in which all NIH-funded work must be put, open-access, into PubMed Central. The journals can still charge institutions that are willing to pay, but there is no barrier to access (though you don't get the journal's pretty type setting).

Refereeing is a complicated thing. As much as you might hope that all scientists and scientific papers are honest and accurate, this is not always the case. I've refereed for several low-quality journals, not because I took any pride in the act, but because people were submitting low quality papers directly based on my work. If I don't serve as a reviewer for these kinds of papers, then I don't have an opportunity to make sure they did things correctly. And whether or not it's correct, a pile of misinformed papers can still gain traction in the larger community. This is becoming more and more the case, particularly since graduate students (in general) are becoming less and less inclined to do very deep and detailed literature reviews. Reviewing is not about supporting a journal. It's an important duty to prevent the spread of misinformation, and also to make sure that the existing work is described in a proper context. Promising to abstain from reviewing certain journals would be a great disservice to your own work and to your scientific field.

Sigh...hasn't anyone watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Pssh.... Socrates is remembered today because he, like Ozzy Osborne, was repeatedly accused of corruption of the young.

That's a rather uninformed point of view. Many graduate students go to school "for free" because it is part of their compensation for performing a job (research, teaching, etc.). Grad students who are being paid to do research are generally being paid out of faculty grants -- money that's coming from the federal government (i.e., taxpayers) or from private institutions, NOT from undergraduate tuition. Grad students who are being paid to teach or to grade assignments, etc., are playing an active role in your education. If the school doesn't have graduate students, then it has to hire someone else to perform those same duties. Not to say that there aren't advantages/disadvantages to going to a school without a graduate program, but it's quite myopic to think that most of your tuition was going to support grad students.

On Slashdot, you're never alone.

You do know that the NIH has never been in the business of funding hair dye research, yes? And you also know that several of your close friends and family members wouldn't be alive today or would have debilitating diseases if not for animal testing, yes? Misanthropy is all well and good, but some of us actually care about our loved ones.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of the institutes under the umbrella National Institutes of Health (NIH). And yes, the NIMH from the cartoon movie is based on the real NIMH.

I'm impressed -- there's nothing new about men on the internet trying to compare their packages. However, it's rare to see that it's not about size -- it's how you use it! That being said, .deb rock me in a way that no .rpm ever could.

Exactly! We need more people to stand up and support the gradual dehumanization of everyone who isn't white and wealthy!

Wow... I've apparently been masturbating incorrectly for years...