The uselessness of most scientific publications (power, publisher, reader, problem)

[buenos]

Have you read peer reviewed journals only to find that the "data" in it is absolutely useless for your own research?
Have you spent countless hours reading a scientific or engineering book, only to find out you have not been able to learn anything useful from it?

Not just a few instances. Most journals, articles, conference papers and books produced by the scientific community seems to serve a purpose of power demonstration for investors and donors, but does not serve the reader (scientist or engineer). There is nothing to be learned from most sci/eng books, they were not made for that purpose. If they even attempt to educate, it goes towards academic ideas, not towards usable practical guidelines. For example, they talk about XYZ technology. But they don't talk about how I the reader can implement that technology at my employer's product.

Most publishers now prefer the power demo articles/books over useful or meritocratic writings. This is due to credentialism and status in the scientific "community". It is 99% politics and 1% science.
This whole arrangement doesn't produce new methods or products for the public, rather it only produces "social status" to some people, in a pyramid scheme.
How did we come to this?
Why most people play along with it?

[Avondalist]

Originally Posted by buenos

How did we come to this?

I'm sure scientists would love to publish meaningful results. The ultimate source of the problem is that the low-hanging fruit has been picked in a lot of disciplines, and new discoveries require lots of money. That money corrupts.

Why most people play along with it?

There's a weird culture in academia that if you drop out and do something else, you are a failure. A failure who makes three to four times what you made in research, for less work . The esteemed minds of research would do well to study some economics and understand how labor markets work.

The youngest generation of researchers actually seems clued in, and they are dropping out of the rat race and heading for greener pastures in industry or - gasp - doing something totally not in a research capacity.