The attention economy corrupts everything it touches: not just science, but journalism, politics, and even childhood.
Being famous used to be rather difficult. Of course there were exceptions (writing To Kill a Mockingbird, being the guy who dove into the river to save a drowning child, for example), but for the most part, you were going to live your life known only to the few hundred or thousand people you met personally.
Even though you could pick up a phone and dial anyone in the world who owned a phone, you wouldn't, and if you did, they'd hang up on you. Now you can force your idiotic, or great ideas onto the screens of millions of people you'll never meet.
Is that a good or a bad thing? It's certainly bad in some ways, and this is one of them.
Being famous used to be rather difficult. Of course there were exceptions (writing To Kill a Mockingbird, being the guy who dove into the river to save a drowning child, for example), but for the most part, you were going to live your life known only to the few hundred or thousand people you met personally.
Even though you could pick up a phone and dial anyone in the world who owned a phone, you wouldn't, and if you did, they'd hang up on you. Now you can force your idiotic, or great ideas onto the screens of millions of people you'll never meet.
Is that a good or a bad thing? It's certainly bad in some ways, and this is one of them.