This article speaks to me of the most destructive force in our human world: the social collective.  It seems that the majority of his ills are sourced directly from the dire circumstances of the mass collective operating on itself in a negative way - that there is something broken in the peer-acceptance process; perhaps it is indeed impossible to advance science without disassociation from the collective reality of all scientists, who - psycho-socially - desire to attain a social goal as an imperative before any kind of natural observation or &#x27;progress&#x27; otherwise; i.e. the complaints of the author would be best addressed to nobody in particular; it is the fact of the anonymous-crowd-mass which produces the conditions degrading science, today.  There are simply too many social machinations in play.  The desire for acceptance at a banal level (grant money), the desire for acclaim at a banal level (peer review), the desire to be heard above the din of the masses, at a most banal level (publication requirements) - all of these banal instincts have accrued much caché in the zeitgeist as reasons for doing things.<p>tl;dr sometimes you have to shake the sheets if you want to get a good sail on.  No great explorer, adventurer, discoverer, scientist, engineer .. ever .. got that way because they followed the processes of the status quo.  The fact that many of us must discover, and learn to stomach: life is not special for a majority of people.  That includes scientists.  It includes people who think they deserve otherwise.  If you want to exceed and excel, propel the species forward: beware the collective.  It will eat you.