Neither of the things described in the parent comment have to do with ego, they have everything to do with career opportunities and outcomes.
The ability to have your research funded is a practical and existential problem for scientists. And I find it quite natural having issues with someone being able to achieve better outcomes through marketing and fame rather than through the quality of their work.
It's something I find aggravating with Google, OpenAI, and cie in the field of machine learning for example. The amount of marketing they benefit from, before their papers are even published, is unfair and anti-meritocratic. I don't want to have to do SEO to be able to stand on even ground with these people.
(And that's not to say Sagan wasn't a good scientist, or that his work communicating science wasn't useful.)
The ability to have your research funded is a practical and existential problem for scientists. And I find it quite natural having issues with someone being able to achieve better outcomes through marketing and fame rather than through the quality of their work.
It's something I find aggravating with Google, OpenAI, and cie in the field of machine learning for example. The amount of marketing they benefit from, before their papers are even published, is unfair and anti-meritocratic. I don't want to have to do SEO to be able to stand on even ground with these people.
(And that's not to say Sagan wasn't a good scientist, or that his work communicating science wasn't useful.)