Bad journalism should be a sackable offence

Case in point: an absurd article in the Wall Street Journal that compares Newton to the modern academic, claims autistic people cannot possibly behave in public, and asks if Newton would fit as he was in the 17th century into a 21st century university, and then concludes that no, he would not, because modern academia has gone to the dogs and also ‘something tells [the author] he wouldn’t’. Of course. This is clearly a writer with an agenda, so we should pay special attention to their inability to explain why their points are valid. Specifically, even if Newton had fit into Cambridge today, what was that supposed to tell us? And then, out of nowhere, comes this quote from a book by J.D. Vance, America’s current vice-president: In ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, Vice President JD Vance wrote memorably of attending a formal dinner while at Yale Law School, tasting sparkling water for the first time and spitting it out in horror. A preference for gross water was, he discovered, one of those things…