My advisor wants me to reinvent the wheel My advisor introduced a model 15 years ago, published a lot of papers (including PNAS). Now, he makes me incorporate this model into well-established model from the neighboring field of research. I think he just tries to stay in the known waters (cite his own papers, etc). Of course, he is well aware (but not proficient) that everything we try now to research was already published in this neighboring field.

What should I do?


Continue to reinvent the wheel with minor modifications (people from the neighboring field will probably laugh)
Try to switch the project (although it will be hard)
Freelance in the "spare" time ;)


Edited after Piotr's remark. Hope that nailed it down a bit.
The issue seems to be that your advisor isn't willing to acknowledge that the problems he's attempting to work on have been solved. I would recommend bringing the relevant papers to him and discussing with him how his proposed projects differ from what already exists in the literature. This way, either (1) he'll clarify how his projects are different from the literature, or (2) you may be able to demonstrate to him that the problem is indeed solved.