Popular wisdom has it that a stricter standard for academic promotion and/or review will improve the research productivity of scholars. My belief is that the popular wisdom is right in the short-run, but it may be wrong in the long-run. A stricter standard can deter the shirking problem among scholars and improve their research performance (the short-run effect), but it may discourage able youth from entering this professional and result in lower research productivity in the future (the long-run effect). A shirking-adverse selection efficiency wage model is set up to show this belief.