University reward structures push young scholars to exaggerate novelty for funding.

Evidence

The constant pressure to produce new effects (which must conform to the old pattern) serves merely as another rule to increase the power of the conventions when any single effect threatens to slip through the net. Every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 100 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The demand for novelty paradoxically strengthens the conventions it appears to escape — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 100; Rewarded school traits correlate negatively with creativity among elite students — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 509

Broader Connections

• The demand for novelty paradoxically strengthens the conventions it appears to escape #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 100