Ugh, yes, when I was in university I had the audacity to attempt to have original thoughts, and everyone was like "Nuh uh, no one has ever said that anywhere in the source material."

But it's like "Someone said A, another person said B, and a third person said C. I'm just putting those together in a new way and telling you ABC." But they're like "None of the sources say ABC." So I'm like "Look at the world around you, and you can clearly see that ABC." And they're like "that's just anecdotal, not a peer-reviewed double-blind study."

I called it academic gatekeeping. I also said it's gaslighting ourselves into ignoring reality. They didn't like either of those things. They seemed to think I was some flat earth anti-vaxxer (I'm not).

Modern academia has become downright anti-intellectual and extremely averse to divergent or non-conforming outlooks. It's kinda sad.