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"To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous
by jackcosgrove 11y ago
"To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous."
This is one of the most common academic tactics: to claim that those who are outside the field are ignorant of it and therefore cannot pass judgment. As someone who claims to be a scientist, you should know that this is an appeal to authority and that a scientist would welcome criticism from anyone regardless of training or background provided their argument was well-argued and supported by evidence.
- hueving 11y agoThe person you are replying true believes that truth is objective and therefore obviously cannot commit a logical fallacy.
- mcguire 11y ago"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
- avs733 11y agoI understand your point, I just disagree. As you point out in the your last sentence, there is an enormous and quite uncanny trench between principled and unprincipled critique. One comes from a place of understanding and heartfelt disagreement, one does not (although one is often presumed by authors). While the former is possible, I would confidently say the both Sokal's and the commenter's came from the later. Edit to add: Sokal's entire proposition (based in frankly an attempt to embarrass a field) exposes the lie underneath the straw man being built to support him.