Victim Blame

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

Why do you think someone with a PhD in botany shouldn't call themselves a doctor in an academic environment? Do you not think that might be relevant to their botanist colleagues?

vonhelmet wrote:

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

Why do you think someone with a PhD in botany shouldn't call themselves a doctor in an academic environment? Do you not think that might be relevant to their botanist colleagues?

I thought I was clear in that these PHD Drs worked in lowly administrative positions in support functions like IT rather than in a department relevant to their PHD subject. I've no doubt that their peers who did work in their subject departments also looked on them with a wry smile.

Appologies for singling out botany, I could have said art history, or  viking and old norse studies - I'm sure they are all really challenging subjects. 

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

How dare they study for 3 years to get a PhD and call themselves Dr.

What's your highest qualification? 

What subjects are in this 'shitty' list?

hirsute wrote:

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

How dare they study for 3 years to get a PhD and call themselves Dr.

 

What's your highest qualification? 

What subjects are in this 'shitty' list?

No idea what system of values would call botany 'shitty'. That seems a bit weird to me, it certainly wouldn't be on my list of "academic disciplines I am a little suspicious of". That's one of the more respectable ones.

But personally I do think it is a bit pretentious to use the title 'Dr' if it's not directly relevant. Friends and fellow-students (from my own dropped-out-and-gave-up PhD days) who actually got theirs don't use the title unless it is relevant to some employment situation.

For one thing, you run the risk of co-workers or social acquaintances asking you about their weird skin condition or chronic stomach pain. Or expecting you to treat an RTC victim ('stand aside and let me through, I'm an expert in medieval art').

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

Mrs Mungecrundle has a PhD in Botany, I'll have you know. Furthermore I am incredibly proud of her achievement in working hard for that qualification and encourage her to use it professionally.

There is little enough respect for people who have actually studied and understand complex aspects of the world around us, how we got to where we are and more importantly what might be done to fix the problems of our own making. Being an "expert" is bandied about as an insult whilst megalomaniac dotards wield vast power and celebrity half wits get paid more for a story on who shagged who in the swimming pool of some poxy island resort than any number of people who are actually useful to society get paid in a year. Don't even get me started on how much kicking a football about is valued in relation to a nurse or engineer....

So, yeah, if someone has earned a PhD then they have earned a level of respect.

Now people who put BSc or BA after their names....

Mungecrundle wrote:

bikeman01 wrote:

ktache wrote:

I am also suspicious of anyone who has to big up the fact they have a phd.

A while back I contracted at Oxford University. It always made me laugh how many junior departmental admin staff had PHDs in shitty subjects like botany and insisted on using the title Dr.

 

Mrs Mungecrundle has a PhD in Botany, I'll have you know. Furthermore I am incredibly proud of her achievement in working hard for that qualification and encourage her to use it professionally.

There is little enough respect for people who have actually studied and understand complex aspects of the world around us, how we got to where we are and more importantly what might be done to fix the problems of our own making. Being an "expert" is bandied about as an insult whilst megalomaniac dotards wield vast power and celebrity half wits get paid more for a story on who shagged who in the swimming pool of some poxy island resort than any number of people who are actually useful to society get paid in a year. Don't even get me started on how much kicking a football about is valued in relation to a nurse or engineer....

So, yeah, if someone has earned a PhD then they have earned a level of respect.

Now people who put BSc or BA after their names....

Let us know when she gets something more challenging than working in the garden centre.

Bikeman Bsc Hons

Spangly Shiny wrote:

My helmet is white, my jacket is saturn yellow with reflectives, my tights have reflectives as do my shoes. I have daylight running lights both front and rear that can be seen from over 1 km away. I always abide by the rules of the road, do not use my phone nor listen to music while riding.

So why do I get close passed so often? Could it possibly be that some drivers are positively maliscious rather than inattentive?

Me too - face it there's a lot of wankers around.

vonhelmet wrote:

If you can't find out where his PhD is from, you're not trying very hard, given his cv is on his website. It's from northeastern university, which is apparently the 40th best university in the states. He's got post doctorate fellowships at a couple of places including Berkeley. He's the real deal, whether you like what he's got to say or not. Play the ball, not the man. If nothing else, this particular man knows a lot more about visual perception than you do.

Yep, I agree with that - he has qualifications and we should examine his arguments and conclusions rather than focussing on whether he's enough of an expert.

One thing that I don't like (apart from his condescending attitude) is his comment that we shouldn't try to change drivers' behaviour as human behaviour is immutable, but then goes on to recommend that all cyclists have to change their behaviour. I've got doubts about his drunken pedestrian statistics but haven't bothered to investigate further (there's not much you can do about drunken pedestrians apart from avoiding them and if you are one yourself, then you're probably not concentrating on being safe).

hawkinspeter wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

If you can't find out where his PhD is from, you're not trying very hard, given his cv is on his website. It's from northeastern university, which is apparently the 40th best university in the states. He's got post doctorate fellowships at a couple of places including Berkeley. He's the real deal, whether you like what he's got to say or not. Play the ball, not the man. If nothing else, this particular man knows a lot more about visual perception than you do.

Yep, I agree with that - he has qualifications and we should examine his arguments and conclusions rather than focussing on whether he's enough of an expert.

One thing that I don't like (apart from his condescending attitude) is his comment that we shouldn't try to change drivers' behaviour as human behaviour is immutable, but then goes on to recommend that all cyclists have to change their behaviour. I've got doubts about his drunken pedestrian statistics but haven't bothered to investigate further (there's not much you can do about drunken pedestrians apart from avoiding them and if you are one yourself, then you're probably not concentrating on being safe).

I'm constantly torn on the question of 'qualifications'.

  "Credentialism" (the idea that you can't have a view on something unless you have been accredited by some high-status group or instituion) is often just another system-of-power, closely related to the class system.  Most professions are indeed conspiracies against the laity, and a great many are more like a priesthood than anything really worthy of respect.

There's an obvious tendency for flawed human beings to try and segue institutional and social power into excessive claims to knowledge that go beyond what is really justified by a rational assesment of the evidence.  Psychology (probably above all) and economics and even medicine are _riven_ with that.  Just look at the history of psychology in particular (not just bias and dubious interpretations, more than a few of its historical big names turn out to have commited outright scientific fraud, and many of its most notable experiments turn out to be unreproducible - its record is abysmal).

One can believe in the principle of scientific enquiry, but still be distrustful of the real-world political and social institutions that claim to be the guardians of that principle.

Just because someone is securely in the elite educated classes, doesn't mean they have to be taken seriously.  Especially in regard to things they say outside of peer-reviewed journals (and even there - sometimes peer-review is just the same small group of people with shared assumptions agreeing with each other).

The problem is on the one hand I feel justified in my past deep cynicism about the likes of Hans Eysenck (who turns out to have been using fake data all along) or those who promote racial theories about IQ, or make ludicous biological-determinist arguments about things that are clearly sociological and political, but I don't want to give an inch to climate-change deniers or creationists.

Just the opening paragraphs of that blog just says 'technocrat with entirely unexamined conservative bias' to me.  That someone so obviously motivated by politics is an 'expert witness' just demonstrates how flawed and biased the system of 'expertise' is.