I dunno, man. My comment was mostly a flippant quip, and yeah, of course I'll concede that most fields runs most of the gamut of incentive structures, but the distribution can vary widely between fields. If that makes sense. My discipline's definitely more of an outlier; very little overlap with industry. Ain't nobody but the taxpayer gonna foot the bill, because there's never going to be a product. It's pure research. Pretty sure I could convince people that the $2 billion dollars for the main experiment I work on was well spent, if I'm granted 30 minutes and a whiteboard. But anyway.

The profit incentives that come with for-profit products seem problematic for a lot of people. Especially when the amount of potential profit is billions of dollars, like for a room temp superconductor. It's not like the guy in this article, Dias, thought he had anything worth two shits, but he still decided to ride the hype train for some short-term recognition. I'd be tempted to say "the system works!" if it didn't damage public trust and perception. Maybe his calculus his that he'll still be able to land a gig for a private company, because he's toast in academia.

I know this is childish, oversimplified, and probably at least a bit of something I tell myself to feel better about having very little income compared to private industry salaries, but I still think there's a nobility in academia. At least in the hard sciences. No, the academic system is not as infallible as I once thought, but it's been really nice to realize that my peers aren't doing what they do for the money. Some of them make a very comfortable amount of money, don't get me wrong, but most of them could earn a lot more in industry, and for less work. Fuck tenured professorship though. I'm not sure where the stereotype of the lazy tenured prof comes from (humanities? note: this is not my perception, I'm trying to guess common opinion), but half of the profs I had in physics seemed miserable. Overworked. Health problems.

I can tell you from years of experience that the attitude in academia is "defend this at all costs" and in industry it's "kill this at all costs".

What is "this"? All of the best researchers that I know in the public sector have very little issue with taking an L and moving on if they were wrong. Again, there's probably a major difference inside academia between fields with a lot of industry overlap vs. not.

I'm cool with not a huge income, but I think having kids would change the game. Already made the choice not to ever do that.