There is no escape from Reviewer 2

Although I agree with quite a bit of this article (particularly seeing others progress more quickly), I have a few comments. It is true that a new title could be nice but if promoted the change in pay would not be that great and I would retain the same office that I have had since I was a lecturer. Given that I am near the end of my career, there is thus no disincentive to prevent me from engaging in the role of the academic to be a disruptor. In fact, unless one is particularly bad, I have seen no evidence that behaving as a good citizen makes much difference. It all comes down to grant income and those with large amounts of this get on rather than those with better h-indices. The real issue is that pay has not kept up and promotion is necessary for early-career academics to maintain a reasonable standard of living. I am not surprised that so few home students are interested in research degrees or the academic profession in my own area (Engineering) despite relatively generous bursaries being on offer.

Research grant monies and publications dwarf teaching effectiveness for career advancement. Despite tuition and classroom enrollment paying the university's bills.

I am not sure what this is about, but if anything it is an example of bad practice, rather than the norm, and as such should be sanctioned by those in a position to do so. I was an editor on a top journal for a decade, and have reviewed many journal submissions. It is up to the editor to sanction bad behaviour, and not invite reviewers who indulge in such behaviour. I have also reviewed many research grants. In that case there is no "editor" function, but it is up to knowledgeable committee members to winnow out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to reviewer comments. On top of that, and against conventional wisdom, I am also a fan of metrics, particularly when dealing with multiple evaluations, and particularly when the items being evaluated - promotion, research grant - are substantial, not as the only determining factor, but as a key factor along with everything else. Thus, h-index (subject to usual qualifiers), citation scores (subject to usual qualifiers) have a certain objectivity, and overcome the essentially impossible task of going through all the key publications in detail, many of which will be outside one's area of expertise. I have to say that as both a recipient and an "inflicter" I have found that the system of science and scholarship works - with good faith and management.

Max Weber was one of the founding intellectuals of the then nascent discipline of sociology. He was extremely successful until his untimely death and had an excellent grasp of many themes in historical and systematic sociology, economics and political science. The article and the curious picture seem to insinuate that he was victim or survivor of humiliations that are deemed as "the very life blood of the academic profession". Nothing could be further from the truth. The article had benefited by a targeted read of Joachim Radkau's biography. Moreover, Weber's analysis of the situation of young academics cannot be cited as support for the misguided pop-psychological interpretation of the author. Weber referred to the specific conditions of German academic institutions.The path to a professorship went through a second thesis after the doctorate ("Habilitation") to obtain the title "Privatdozent" (without salary of course), i.e. a lengthy period of precariousness which was the source of the stress Weber analyzed in "Science as a Vocation". As the author of this article only uses one paragraph of this writing he completely distorts its meaning in order to justify his misanthropic view of Academia as based on humiliation.

Thank you for your ChatGPT inspired reply. Please read the said Weber lecture and the offending sentence is very clear and definitely not take out of context.