Snoop Dogg

I've like been a preacher/believer of the concept that academia is like a pyramid scheme. Kind of like selling tupperware if you will. It works like this: I start selling my tupperware (research). I take it to parties (conferences) where lots of disinterested house wives and husbands listen to me pedal my wares, then at the end a few bite and buy some (read my paper). This has a) minor benefit through the money made through purchases (citations of your paper) and b) more major benefits if the person themselves start to sell tupperware (catch on with your research and start working with you to produce more papers).

Now I'm on to a new metaphor for the research world: Rap music. You see, being a researcher is a lot like being a rapper. When you are a bottom feeding rapper (PhD student/early career researcher) you take any scrap of work that comes your way, rapping night and day (writing as many papers as you can), always on the look out for big time rappers to "feature" you on their new single (established researchers with money and a program, getting you to do all the work on a paper that they vaguely have some idea about the contents of). Then when people out there start to see "Snoop Dogg featuring Wiz Khalifa - This weed is mine" (Terence Tao and Dann Mallet, On the rap/math-research metaphor conjecture), the bottom feeder starts to grow in popularity and moves their way up the rap ladder (starts to get research grants and pick up bottom feeders of their own).

It's a twisted game... but one day I too will be singing "this weed is mine" or something like that.