where is Ann?

How do established researchers react to PhD students critisizing their work (e.g. in a literature review). Are they annoyed and is it foolish to do this or do they welcome justified critique. I need to know, as I was thinking about contacting the leading expert in my field and ask for comments, despite having heaviliy critisized his work. I need advice as I'm very confused!

I sincerely feel unhappy in academia

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I did not mean to de-value your research by saying 'fruitless'. Fruitless, only in the sense of not having the desired impact.
At least you got some real publications. Everybody around me has a publication list of 20 or more, but by looking at the actual content, it is often academic conferences (where they quite often did not even present).

I'm not black and white in thinking. But being here and seeing the madness of the academic environment and although being fully aware that there is madness in the outside world, too, I can only come to the conclusion that you appear to lack self-confidence at the moment. This is understandable as you feel like you ran in the wrong direction for seven years. Still, it's not as bad as you currently think. All you need is a change of perspective. You are probably completely burnt out after all these years of fruitless PhD research? If you can, save money from low-salary job (please not from essay mills, they should be prosectuted and not supported) and take a holiday.

Remember, although people gave you advice to do a PhD a couple of years ago, it is YOU who made the decision. You should never regret your decision because human beings will never be able to know what would have happened by going down a different route. Similarly, you can make the conscious decision now to leave this student/PhD forum (after all, you're not a student anymore) and to get an appropriate job somewhere (as said above, not necessarily in academic environment).

Everything will be better than

"As for the essay mills, I am not sure how they devalue the work of others?" - Badhaircut, these essay mills are basically crimial organisations, you devalue the work of every single hardworking student in this country. I worked my arse off for years to get a first (UG) and a distinction (Masters). I could easily have spent that time in the pub like the people you are planning to work for. You are basically trying to convince yourself that you are doing nothing bad but that this world is a bad place. But this is not correct: you are still doing something FUNDAMENTALLY bad if you work for a bloody essay mill.

Also, I'm starting to get annoyed by your rant-attitude, you tend to blame the system a lot, but don't necessarily take any advice of anybody on board.

I'm not so sure about this. We also hear about Iraquis and human traffickers quite often. But maybe our brain chooses to file these informations under 'not so important' or 'normal', together with 'destruction of the rainforest' and 'what did I have for lunch three days ago'.

No, don't worry. I'm not French...

tell her she is a snobbish idiot..

It's funny that you tell this story, because I had an argument with someone in my office yesterday for exactly the same reason. In this case, I said it's hypocritical to make such a hype because of her, with all the celebrities offering millions of pounds and so on, while human traffikers kidnap African children every day and subsequently sell them to professional paedophile rings. I guess it's just a difficult topic, so I wouldn't worry about losing temper. It happens.

Also, once one person appears, the other answers usually within a couple of minutes, despite not hanging around the forum.

This bizarre thread really scares the sh** out of me. One person talking to herself and another self. No reaction to the comments made by other forum users. Weird content. None of the three (really just one) ever appeared in other thread. You are either aliens or spies communicating in a secret language or I'm just going paranoid

LOL@404. I can assure you, me and Juno are def. not the same person (we also have different gender, I believe)

The only problem is: you got to apply quickly in the real world as you will definitely miss that train if you 'waste' a couple of years as PostDoc etc. (this, of course, is only the case if you want to leave the academic environment, otherwise PostDocs are not a waste of time).

Summary: Apply for graduate jobs, feel a bit akward in the first two years, but then it will all fall into place. Good luck