Law School

A Jurisdynamics post describes how Gell-Mann's autobiographical and lyrical book, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, spans this broader weblog network's subjects of interest. Gell-Mann does propose at least one intriguing change in academic culture, which I commend to MoneyLaw's readership:

We must attach a higher prestige to that very creative act, the writing of serious review articles and books that distinguish the reliable from the unreliable and systematize and encapsulate, in the form of reasonably successful theories and other schemata, what does seem reliable. If an academic publishes a novel research result at the frontier of knowledge . . . , he or she may reap a reward in the form of a professorship or a promotion, even if the result is later shown to be entirely wrong. However, clarifying the meaning of what has already been done (or picking out what is worth learning from what is not) is much less likely to advance an academic career. Humanity will be much better off when the reward structure is altered so that selection pressures on careers favor the sorting out of information as well as its acquisition.