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I find this kind of shallow dismissal of a tenured Stanford professor's work based on their thesis unproductive. Engaging with their current, relevant work wou

I find this kind of shallow dismissal of a tenured Stanford professor's work based on their thesis unproductive. Engaging with their current, relevant work would be more appropriate. This is exactly what the GP is saying - many of us don't like the conclusions, but just blowing off a whole body of work in a sentence is pretty arrogant.

rayiner 5y ago
There’s tenured Stanford professors in many subjects, such as theology. I’m sure their work is impressive within the context of the field. But that doesn’t mean it’s rigorous or has real world application. PhD publications are supposed to be a serious contributions to the field. This particular work won a major award. Stop it with the accusations of “arrogance” and naked credentialism. Any of the millions of people with an undergraduate STEM degree (mine is in aerospace engineering) learns enough about the scientific method to distinguish “rigorous” work from non-rigorous work. It’s actually kind of an important thing they try to teach. Scientists and engineers who don’t call out non-rigorous work that claims the mantle of “expertise” are shirking their moral obligations and helping to erode the credibility of science as a larger discipline.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Arrogance is skimming a PhD thesis in a field wildly different from your own and deciding you are more competent in your ability to evaluate its "rigor" than the dozens or people in that field who evaluated it that had a different conclusion. It's not an original arrogance - it's pretty common amongst the STEM educated to basically consider all humanities, philosophy, social sciences to be not "serious" fields. Just because it's common, doesn't make it not arrogant. Individual humans are not free body diagrams. And societies even more so. The study of people and groups of people and the way to understand them, engage them, and influence them (which is what "education" is) is not going to be familiar to an aerospace engineer. That doesn't mean it isn't built on the work and research of thousands of people over centuries.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > Arrogance is skimming a PhD thesis in a field wildly different from your own and deciding you are more competent in your ability to evaluate its "rigor" than the dozens or people in that field who evaluated it that had a different conclusion. What a flimsy and transparent effort to insulate non-rigorous fields from criticism. Ironically, one of the things I do for a living these days, as an attorney, is attack the credibility of credentialed experts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard. There is a whole process where attorneys and judges without specific expertise in a field evaluate the reliability of assertions by expert by reference to accepted scientific principles. Because that’s a thing you can do! You don’t need to be an expert in a field to know whether they applied reliable methodologies. More importantly, people will do it. If you tell them to trust stuff that doesn’t seem trustworthy based on what they learned about the scientific method in high school, then it erodes your credibility and the credibility of all authorities. There’s a lot of work out there that’s not rigorous, and we have a moral obligation to call it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > It's not an original arrogance - it's pretty common amongst the STEM educated to basically consider all humanities, philosophy, social sciences to be not "serious" fields. Theology, film, German literature, European history, etc., are all “serious fields.” They’re the product of work by thousands of people over decades or centuries. That doesn’t mean they’re rigorous. Their ability to provide truth value is fundamentally limited by the nature of the discipline. And yes, maybe engineers have a big head about it. I suspect that’s because they don’t have to brow beat anyone into recognizing the seriousness of their field or the authority of the expertise it generates. You can go up to a random yokel in a Bangladeshi village and he’ll be impressed at your STEM degree. I’ll posit to you that there is a basis for that. In methodology, the field of education is akin to something like the field of business. It’s based on observation and case studies. It’s not wholly without value, but holding it up as a rigorous discipline that commands deference is disingenuous.
    - deanCommie 5y ago

rayiner 5y ago

There’s tenured Stanford professors in many subjects, such as theology. I’m sure their work is impressive within the context of the field. But that doesn’t mean it’s rigorous or has real world application. PhD publications are supposed to be a serious contributions to the field. This particular work won a major award. Stop it with the accusations of “arrogance” and naked credentialism. Any of the millions of people with an undergraduate STEM degree (mine is in aerospace engineering) learns enough about the scientific method to distinguish “rigorous” work from non-rigorous work. It’s actually kind of an important thing they try to teach. Scientists and engineers who don’t call out non-rigorous work that claims the mantle of “expertise” are shirking their moral obligations and helping to erode the credibility of science as a larger discipline.

deanCommie 5y ago
Arrogance is skimming a PhD thesis in a field wildly different from your own and deciding you are more competent in your ability to evaluate its "rigor" than the dozens or people in that field who evaluated it that had a different conclusion. It's not an original arrogance - it's pretty common amongst the STEM educated to basically consider all humanities, philosophy, social sciences to be not "serious" fields. Just because it's common, doesn't make it not arrogant. Individual humans are not free body diagrams. And societies even more so. The study of people and groups of people and the way to understand them, engage them, and influence them (which is what "education" is) is not going to be familiar to an aerospace engineer. That doesn't mean it isn't built on the work and research of thousands of people over centuries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Arrogance is skimming a PhD thesis in a field wildly different from your own and deciding you are more competent in your ability to evaluate its "rigor" than the dozens or people in that field who evaluated it that had a different conclusion. What a flimsy and transparent effort to insulate non-rigorous fields from criticism. Ironically, one of the things I do for a living these days, as an attorney, is attack the credibility of credentialed experts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard. There is a whole process where attorneys and judges without specific expertise in a field evaluate the reliability of assertions by expert by reference to accepted scientific principles. Because that’s a thing you can do! You don’t need to be an expert in a field to know whether they applied reliable methodologies. More importantly, people will do it. If you tell them to trust stuff that doesn’t seem trustworthy based on what they learned about the scientific method in high school, then it erodes your credibility and the credibility of all authorities. There’s a lot of work out there that’s not rigorous, and we have a moral obligation to call it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > It's not an original arrogance - it's pretty common amongst the STEM educated to basically consider all humanities, philosophy, social sciences to be not "serious" fields. Theology, film, German literature, European history, etc., are all “serious fields.” They’re the product of work by thousands of people over decades or centuries. That doesn’t mean they’re rigorous. Their ability to provide truth value is fundamentally limited by the nature of the discipline. And yes, maybe engineers have a big head about it. I suspect that’s because they don’t have to brow beat anyone into recognizing the seriousness of their field or the authority of the expertise it generates. You can go up to a random yokel in a Bangladeshi village and he’ll be impressed at your STEM degree. I’ll posit to you that there is a basis for that. In methodology, the field of education is akin to something like the field of business. It’s based on observation and case studies. It’s not wholly without value, but holding it up as a rigorous discipline that commands deference is disingenuous.
  - deanCommie 5y ago