You've hit the nail on the head with the issue of academics and the problem of their approach. I have had many arguments with other investors about this, particularly in Cardano groups!😂
I have had the misfortune of having to work with the academic community on various occasions. I find their methods to be not only slow (as you said), but also deeply flawed.
It turns out that you can have e.g. shockingly poor research methodology, but as long as two or three of your colleagues agree with you, your work can become "peer reviewed" - a subjective term which academics treat as an unassailable holy cow.
I would honestly rather trust a Wikipedia article, viewed and corrected by hundreds of thousands of people than a peer reviewed magazine article. But you'll win no prizes for guessing which one the academics prefer, in fact they shun projects such as Wikipedia (and by extension, possibly most cryptos too), mocking them as easily corruptible and poorly researched, which of course is not the case.
It's only in the very hard-core sciences that the true experts shine. I'd rather trust two or three professional quantum physicists than a Facebook quantum physics group; but in the softer sciences e.g. social sciences, this most certainly does not hold true!
I spent three years at university earning myself a commerce degree which I place very little value on. I could have developed much better skills had I actually been working for those three years. I have vowed never to study again.