I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a fake concession. There is academic value in far-out research that isn&#x27;t relevent to industry, just like there&#x27;s value in math research and in metaphysics.<p>The point the article tries to make is that if you&#x27;re trying to research something relevent to industry, it&#x27;s probably not nearly as valuable academically as something more exotic would be, so you&#x27;d better make a good effort to make it practically valuable to compensate.<p><i>Nobody is that much of a condescending prick to the person they&#x27;re trying to persuade.</i><p>In context the line didn&#x27;t appear condescending at all as I read it. A little sarcastic, that&#x27;s all. The author made it clear that he doesn&#x27;t think academics <i>need</i> to produce something that&#x27;s actually used by consumers. And the author was&#x2F;is an academic. If you&#x27;ll allow me to speculate, it seems that <i>you</i> don&#x27;t have the highest opinion of academics and so it seems possible that you might further think that in order to be valuable they need to produce a product that is economically valuable. If you read the &quot;I know, crazy, right?&quot; line with that attitude, I can see how it might appear much more condescending than it actually is.<p><i>This is not a &quot;we need to talk&quot; conversation this is a &quot;I need to talk at you, so I can show off to other people.&quot;</i><p>This is a non sequitur. &quot;This article isn&#x27;t trying to persuade academics, therefore it is trying to promote the author&#x27;s social standing at academics&#x27; expense&quot;. The author identified a problem and offered a potential solution, does that mean he also has to persuade? Your statement presents a false dichotomy, that he has to either persuade academics or shame academics to promote himself. I say that he doesn&#x27;t make an attempt to persuade beyond identifying problem and solution because he doesn&#x27;t want to bore the reader with rhetoric, nothing more nefarious.