>The first part is true, but the mediocre scientists aren't necessarily politically-connected.
I got my PhD at an international research lab. I was a research fellow in nuclear physics at a Russell Group (i.e. top-16) university in the UK for 7 years. I was a guest scientist at CERN. I know whereof I speak ;-)
[EDIT: Let's assume that if you are mediocre and not politically-connected, you don't get tenure and you don't stay long. You don't supervise students in an official fashion. This is mostly true, I think.]
I can assure you that when (if!) you come to apply for tenure, it will matter more who your friends are and whose bags you carried than the papers that you produced or the students that you mentored. I agree that most scientists are incredibly busy. Sadly, because they are all incredibly busy, it's the extra stuff (the handshakes, the dinners, etc.) that come to matter. The technical stuff (the tooling, the methods) don't matter precisely because the group heads don't understand them - but they do understand who they had dinner with last week, or who gave a nice talk at that pleasant conference. They do understand that their friend was their prospective employee's supervisor, and they do understand the concept of political favours. They understand prestige and status and how to obtain it, almost by definition. That speaks to your last point too.
> Also mind: some scientists are brilliant. They're just not the mode, or even always the shining stars of the field, since professional scientists are mostly selected (and therefore optimized) for tenacity (being bored and working weekends for very little compensation) and consistency (producing 110% the desired results, from elementary school through grant applications).
I disagree slightly, with the benefit of experience. The most brilliant people I knew all left science. They (we, now) went to draw larger salaries in industry, working half the hours and with more pleasant colleagues. The people that were left were those without brilliance but with the tenacity to hold on and without the skills to get a decent job in a mid-career switch. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions, but they're rare (again, only in my experience).
> up until you move from doing research to mostly teaching or administrating
Well, at this point you've failed, you see - you've given up doing science :-) But you still get graded - there are departmental quotas and budget forecasts and student surveys and now you're a middle manager. But you get paid less.
I got my PhD at an international research lab. I was a research fellow in nuclear physics at a Russell Group (i.e. top-16) university in the UK for 7 years. I was a guest scientist at CERN. I know whereof I speak ;-)
[EDIT: Let's assume that if you are mediocre and not politically-connected, you don't get tenure and you don't stay long. You don't supervise students in an official fashion. This is mostly true, I think.]
I can assure you that when (if!) you come to apply for tenure, it will matter more who your friends are and whose bags you carried than the papers that you produced or the students that you mentored. I agree that most scientists are incredibly busy. Sadly, because they are all incredibly busy, it's the extra stuff (the handshakes, the dinners, etc.) that come to matter. The technical stuff (the tooling, the methods) don't matter precisely because the group heads don't understand them - but they do understand who they had dinner with last week, or who gave a nice talk at that pleasant conference. They do understand that their friend was their prospective employee's supervisor, and they do understand the concept of political favours. They understand prestige and status and how to obtain it, almost by definition. That speaks to your last point too.
> Also mind: some scientists are brilliant. They're just not the mode, or even always the shining stars of the field, since professional scientists are mostly selected (and therefore optimized) for tenacity (being bored and working weekends for very little compensation) and consistency (producing 110% the desired results, from elementary school through grant applications).
I disagree slightly, with the benefit of experience. The most brilliant people I knew all left science. They (we, now) went to draw larger salaries in industry, working half the hours and with more pleasant colleagues. The people that were left were those without brilliance but with the tenacity to hold on and without the skills to get a decent job in a mid-career switch. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions, but they're rare (again, only in my experience).
> up until you move from doing research to mostly teaching or administrating
Well, at this point you've failed, you see - you've given up doing science :-) But you still get graded - there are departmental quotas and budget forecasts and student surveys and now you're a middle manager. But you get paid less.