A nice side benefit of scientific profession is to become an honest, objective person who promotes equality, and ultimately democracy. In less democratic countries, therefore, we can say that either academics are not part of the ruling class or they are not true scientists. But this can be true for the democracy role models as well. Here's why.
Being a president of a country is perhaps equal to being the person having the highest position of influence. Same can be said for any institution, department or laboratory. A lifetime presidency normally means dictatorship in democracies and tyranny at its worst. But then why scientists, who normally are almost always liberal in real life politics, occupy positions of influence a lot longer than they should, in not so few cases, for a lifetime? Think about journal editors, funding managers, department chairs, and higher up positions at academic foundations. They usually don't give up influence even if they leave the posts, putting their successors in key places.
I'd normally not care, but these people are staunchly supportive of civic liberties, equal opportunities or democracies and usually are extremely concerned when a minor breach of human rights happens around the world. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but it is outright hypocrisy when you don't clean up your house before calling someone else dirty.
There I said it. And this has nothing to do with the rejection of my most recent paper.
