> Why aren't you excited for pushing the frontier of knowledge

They are excited. They just hate getting scooped [1] because it means that precious tenure status and niche community name recognition stays out of reach.

That's not me endorsing or denouncing what's going on. Just one professor trying to rationalize what the big deal is all about.

That's why I study colors now.

[1] https://datascience.codata.org/articles/10.5334/dsj-2017-029