Why Do Bad Ideas Come From Academia as Well As Other Elites?

 Over the course of time, it seems that some of the worst ideas imaginable for society, have come from academia and/or other elists.  Why is this?

In short, it is because certain fields lack the immediate, self-correcting feedback of physical or economic reality.  Those ideas are developed in a vacuum immune from reality; absent of reality.

Fields in business or in engineering, on the other hand, face harsh feedback, in the form of testing, of bad ideas.  These fields have to operate in reality.  They can't exist in a vacuum.  A bridge built with faulty engineering will collapse.  An economic model based on false (or limited) assumptions fails in the market.

And the truth is, the fields that escape reality, have an endless list of ideas they think ought to be tried, and there's zero accountability if they turn out to be wrong.  Those who promote those ideas write academic papers, and get published, and many support theses; but there is never any accountability for being wrong.  No one loses their PhD for having bad ideas.  No professor loses his job for being wrong.

Whereas, in fields such as engineering, people are expected to base their statements on testing to prove their assertions.  In in the real world, anyone that consistently steers a company down a path with disastrous ideas, loses their job.  However, this is not true in government or in academia.  So bad ideas abound, and bad ideas continue.  There is no connection to reality.

 Academic careerism incentivizes high-volume output over practical use.  This rewards sensationalism and/or conformity over truth.   It pushes publishing of papers, regardless or the usefulness of the ideas or the truth in content.

Complex jargon and ideological frameworks sometimes become internal credentialing mechanisms in academia, where challenging those ideas risks professional ostracization rather intellectual correction based on facts.

Currently, it is built into the academic systems to avoid intellectual correction of ideas.  So bad ideas are perpetuated.  Challenging those ideas is strongly discouraged.

Likewise, in other fields, such as news media, challenging these promoted ideas can cost someone their job.  So for the most part, people tow the party line and avoid deviation from anything other than the approved language.