Many fields are being "socialized," ie subordinated to norms based on social objectives rather than purely objective criteria.
I've read about universities ranking scientists and candidates based on the journals their stuff is published in and the types of grants they get. So this could mean (my numbers here) you would get a 10 for a Nature paper and a 0.5 for a paper in, say, the Western Grafton County Journal of Biology. The content is irrelevent: even if the Grafton County paper provides useful information and the Nature paper is later found to be kind of close, but not actually right, it doesn't matter.
I look at this stuff and think, "No wonder people fabricate results."
Plus there's the whole thing about getting along with the senior people....
Painful.
Val
