I totally TOTALLY agree. I was trying to stay away from offering value judgement and be a little more descriptive. it is not necessarily effective, but, it is.

I totally TOTALLY agree. I was trying to stay away from offering value judgement and be a little more descriptive. it is not necessarily effective, but, it is. I have done similar things, with similar reactions. I think such approaches in fact negatively impact science...especially through the public's engagement with it. Perhaps my 'favorite' was trying to do a conference session about active learning using...active learning. Got told that it was unprofessional and that those listening were 'peers not students'. There was a really wonderful paper on academia I read not long ago[1] that basically made the argument that a darwinian biology framework basically explained all this. It basically asked the question what is a defense that arose to solve a problem, and has now transformed into what looks like a defect...and how do we separate those (or should we) from actual defects. Today I stumbled across a similar article which discussed [1] Lohmann, S. (2004). Darwinian medicine for the university. Governing Academia: Who Is in Charge at the Modern University, 71-90. [2] ...and of course I can't re-find it. I'll update if I do.