It's extremely common for many scientists (nuclear physicists, neuroscientists, biochemists, etc.) to spend a few years in the industry and either teach for a while or publish a paper on the side and then come back to full-time work when they feel like it again. This obsession on drawing a hard line between the two is utter nonsense and reeks of classic HN techbro simple-mindedness. You would easily make the mistake of dismissing a professional in the middle of an academic stint as someone who has no experience at all, just to feed your sense of self-superiority.

Err, did you mean to respond to a different post? I was pointing out that the jobs (not the people) are fundamentally different. As a result, denigrating academics for not “playing the game” makes no sense. They are “playing” a different “game.”

It is like complaining that Wayne Gretzky sucked at getting points — compare his scores to, like, any vaguely offense-focused basketball player!

In this description, who is building what you call "state of the art"?