Prestige‑Driven Research Clusters

Academic incentives (tenure, grants, journals) concentrate scholars into a few dense topic clusters that reward mastery of prestigious methods rather than broader social value. This leaves vast 'rural' areas of potentially high‑impact abstract inquiry underpopulated and underfunded because there are no reliable publication venues, jobs, or funding pathways for work that crosses or leaves those clusters. — If true, public research funding and institutional reform should realign incentives toward measurable social return and meta‑priority setting rather than method‑prestige signalling.