What causes us to become...?

[[Labret]]

or do you eat from the palm of the hand of stas giving you by "academia"?

Again, I am not quite sure what you uneducated folk think happens when you walk through those doors, but as the article you posted on neocon think tanks so eloquently stated, academia has checks and balances. You dont become a phd and a leader in your field by just making shit up. The entire process is nothing but defending yourself from nonstop attacks on your theories or arguments. Trust me my dearest Serge, if someone tries to spit out bullshit statistics or crackpot science, someone will be there to ram it up their ass, THAT is what academia is in a nutshell. A bunch of nerds doing their best to discredit and destroy someone elses lifes work. Checks and balances.

So in light of that, do I accept the findings of someone who has spent the better part of his life fighting his way to the top of the academic food chain on some statistics as trivial as rates of Soviet imprisonment per 100k of population? Yeah, I do. Like I said, if he was lying, someone would be there to point it out, and they wouldnt do it nicely.

This reminds me of the time Buff claimed to have destroyed Noam Chomsky in an email debate, god thats funny.