¡°Do you get further in academia if you are a jerk?¡± asks Inger Mewburn, director of research training at the Australian National University, on her .

After meeting friends and basking in the ¡°circle of niceness¡± they provide, Dr Mewburn realised something. ¡°All of us had a story or two to tell about academic colleagues who had been rude, dismissive, passive aggressive or even outright hostile¡­in the workplace.¡±

There could be a reason. Dr Mewburn points to research suggesting that negative or unkind people can be perceived as less likeable but more intelligent than those who express themselves in ¡°gentler¡± ways.

¡°Cleverness is a form of currency in academia; or ¡®cultural capital¡¯ if you like,¡± she says. ¡°If other academics think you are clever they will listen to you more; you will be invited to speak at other institutions, to sit on panels and join important committees and boards.¡±

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Dr Mewburn considers some of the arguments proposed by Stanford University professor Robert Sutton in his book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn¡¯t (2010).

¡°He argues that it¡¯s easy for asshole behaviour to become normalised in the workplace because, most of the time, the assholes are not called to account. So it¡¯s possible that many academics are acting like assholes without even being aware of it.¡±

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Although she would ¡°rather collaborate than compete¡± and doesn¡¯t like confrontation, Dr Mewburn admits she has ¡°acted like a jerk in public¡­in the past, especially when I was an architecture academic where a culture of vicious critique [is the norm]¡±.

But, she says, she is uncomfortable with ¡°being an asshole¡± herself - and ¡°deeply uncomfortable¡± with the idea that acting that way can boost your career.

However, although Professor Sutton concludes that there are ¡°real costs to organisations for putting up with asshole behaviour¡±, Dr Mewburn says this does not mean that ¡°asshole¡± academics are not driving capable scholars away from the sector.

¡°Put simply, the nice clever people leave. I suspect this happens in academia all the time. It¡¯s a vicious cycle which means people who are more comfortable being an asshole easily outnumber those who find this behaviour obnoxious,¡± Dr Mewburn warns.

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¡°We need to work together to break the circle of nastiness,¡± she concludes. ¡°It¡¯s up to all of us to be aware that we have a potential bias in the way we judge others; to be aware that being clever comes in nice and nasty packages.¡±

The blog post provoked a huge response on social networking site Twitter. Jonathan Jones (), lecturer in atomic and laser physics at the University of Oxford, said: ¡°Absolutely academia rewards assholes, I worked that out a long time ago. But so does business and ¡®life¡¯.¡±

Cait MacPhee (), professor of biological physics at the University of Edinburgh, added: ¡°My experience is based almost entirely on academe, but assholarity does seem to be encouraged there.¡±

Send links to topical, insightful and quirky online comment by and about academics to chris.parr@tsleducation.com

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