How:
1. Our voices that become more and more heard.
2. Our presentations if we give talks about the culture, funding and impact in academia (like I do when invited for it)
3. Our articles (when we write about it in Nature/Science/etc), which is facilitated by (again) all this discussion.
4. People around us who are involved in decision making and who listen to what we say (in person).
5. Finally, the 'unhappiness' expressed by a general research public and beyond (due to low quality research published, poor education, etc) - ultimately, it's about taxes.
When:
- It's all changing slowly. I see that some criteria are reevaluated once in 3-5 years on average, others change over 10-15 years. I am afraid to say that it will take 1-2 generations if we are lucky.
But this is why it's SO important to get younger PIs understand the essence of research, importance of risky projects, uselessness of h indices and IFs. They will lead the next generation of scientists. If they cannot become different from their advisors, how can we make it thorugh?