A Defense of Publish or Perish

The Pope Center has often criticized the publsh or perish system for promoting faculty members since it encourages a great deal of wasteful effort -- nearly unreadable stuff that merely fills up pages in obscure journals. In today's piece, however, Professor Paul Gottfried offers a defense of publish or perish. He acknowledges that it is flawed, but argues that the alternatives are worse. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst form of government -- except for all the others that have been tried and Gottfried's view of publish or perish is quite similar to that.