They may be the ones you call when an oversized marshmallow is attacking New York, but would they make it through the hoops needed to get tenure? I recently saw the new Ghostbusters movie and was struck by the role of tenure at the beginning of the movie. While some of the details weren’t very accurate, the specifics around tenure made me ask the question: Would the Ghostbusters get tenure?
Kristen Wiig’s character Erin Gilbert is going up for tenure at Columbia University. She is worried when a book she wrote years earlier regarding the paranormal is suddenly available on Amazon. No self respecting physicist—and certainly not one receiving tenure at a top university—would write such a ridiculous book.