For the greater part of the past few years I have been doing academic papers, thesis and dissertations for students. When I was first asked to do the deed, I objected for ethical reasons. This opportunity though raised another important question and thus I started delving deeper into the nature of academia. When I realized that many students simply didn't bother due to the fact that college became a super store for degrees, I saw it as a business opportunity. It was one of the most lucrative things I have ever done. Academia has become a joke and I seized the moment.
The overall demand was rather worrying if we consider how many people are employed with advanced degrees. Throughout the years, I have written several Bachelor and Masters' thesis in Sociology, Psychology, Marketing, Business Administration, Journalism, History and Design. It wasn't even that hard. When it comes to these unscientific (to me) fields all I had to do was to read a few papers and then formulate a long descriptive essay. Most of it was paraphrasing from copy-pasting. I even constructed questionnaires for experiments based on other similar ones. I rarely had any problems from my customers' professors since their level didn't seem to be that higher than mine. Other peers with more experience than me even did PhD's for a crazy amount of money. It was evident that those who have money could buy qualifications. Based on my "underground" experience, this is rather becoming the rule rather than the exception.
You see, Science, in its greater generic sense, consists of the set of practices, people and institutions that end up forming opinions under a given epistemological consensus. Every scientist, every School of Thought, has a special way of doing things. There is no such thing as universality in practice. Much like the outside world, it involves politics, funding, corruption and above all the dreaded consensus. Science is not immune to bullshit or bribery like most people believe. We all like to keep the idealism high, but having spend some time in academia, I can't seem to hold any respect for most of these fields.
One of the things I tackle often is the modern scientific process — or better, the sociology of science within academic environments. Contrary to common belief, the culture of scientific discourse has nothing to do with the scientific process itself. Nonetheless, due to recent political and cultural developments in our culture, both ideas have muddled together into a single intellectual absurdity. Without trying to be dramatic, in my opinion, we are currently witnessing the greatest attack on Science since the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
On and in itself Science is completely useless and abstract as a concept. Nonetheless , the word is thrown around a lot and almost for every possible subject. We are currently witnessing the birth of the scientific meme. "Science says..." and everything else after this opening suddenly gains a special weight. Everyone uses the label in their own way whether they are academics or students. Even people who pretend to use the scientific method label it as such. No need to be alarmed when the next layman uses a scientific article to sell a product. Everybody does this more or less. Do we have any idea what is going on in the background for most of the research? Absolutely not. Heck, there might be guys like me right now writing up research gigs for the food you are allowed to consume.
Due to the fact that the scientific method is the best tool humanity has ever come up with, opportunists have found a way to abuse it. No, I am not talking about the usual charlatans of homeopathy, chiropractics and alternative medicine. I am talking about fields that most people aspire to them for being scientific. Most of them are merely a political front for pushing agendas. Others seem to be a relic from the past that just refuses to go away due to the kingship status of some tenured professors. These two practices are the epitome of the cancer of post-modernism that has been becoming more and more popular over the past few decades in academia.
At one point in time, Alchemy developed into Chemistry. It was a painful move but it had to happen. Astrology also had to be rejected and thus slowly give way to Cosmology. Today we are stuck yet again on some relics of the past that refuse to go away. There is simply way too much at stake — both financial and intellectual for anybody to even dare to make the suggestion. Sociology should die out and give way to the science of Anthropology. Psychology should call it quits and rather continue with Neurobiology. Cosmology itself has become a fat joke. Planetary science should have replaced Cosmology and Astronomy long time ago. Yet, nothing of all these happens. Much like Astrology they are still haunting us mostly because they are popular among the masses.
Society has slowly shifted into a new paradigm that tends to mush up everything together under the same label. Ignorance has become the same as knowledge. Actual scientific processes have been rendered into political schemes. Satisfying the masses and being politically correct has become more important than doing science itself.
I am critical of science because I believe it should be cherished, not poisoned by charlatans and popularizers. When I see NASA spokesperson Neil Degrasse Tyson — that audacious but charming fellow — talking about a space race with China, I worry. He actively promotes the greatest paramilitary program on Earth (NASA), while the new generation forgets that last time this happened we almost ended up causing a Nuclear War.
source
I also worry because he mentions fancy words such as "astrobiology", something that has nothing to do with the actual scientific process. As far as I am concerned, we have yet to find any form of biology outside our planet. How the heck one even comes up with an entire 'scientific field' by merely asserting that it exists? Even so, how can one even study something that does not exist? Assuming that life will be carbon-based and that we could study it is rather ludicrous. Way too many unknown unknowns to even formulate a hypothesis. Impossible to contact any experiments. How could we possibly assume that extra-terrestrial life would resemble the one on earth and have the audacity to rape the scientific method in order to work backwards from our conclusions towards experiments? How is this any different than alchemy or homeopathy? But hey, if NASA endorses the term, it must be valid right?
People like him only want to excite the naive sci-fi minds that adhere into a geeky Start-Trek utopia. This trend of pop-science that gathers superficial crowds (such as the "I Fucking Love Science" on facebook) are rather cancerous to the real scientists and their work. These guys are not making science popular. They are rather turning it into a generic meme that has to do more with exciting graphics and cool videos. With all the hype going, they become an agenda for passing down specific policies. If it has to do with "space" is all good to us. Little do we know that all those technologies are simply a front for militaristic advancements as it has been demonstrated over and over again.
Even the Elon Musk meme, is being funded for his self landing missile from the U.S military. What do crowds do? They cheer because he also makes cool green electric cards that "save" the environment. Sure, save the environment while testing missile technologies that are going to be shot in some poor guy's living room on the other side of the planet. We are all in it folks, but we refuse to accept the consequences of this science-hype because of the"advancement and progress—fuck yeah-narrative".
Our institutions have become fronts for specific vested interests. Sure they keep doing the experiments every now and then, publishing mostly useless papers but really, at the end funding talks, nothing else. Anyone with a pinch of critical thinking can understand when something is scientific and when it is not. Psychology and Sociology for example shouldn't even exist as scientific fields. Labeling these atrocities soft-sciences is like calling a 4 month pregnant woman "a little pregnant".
Humans are extremely complex entities. We cannot possibly group them together and study them effectively under social sciences. Heck, in actual scientific fields such as chemistry, physics and biology we isolate parameters in a great extent in order to find evidence. Replicating any experience in social sciences is physically impossible. Human behavior changes depending on what we ate last night, if we got laid and what magazine we read in the waiting room before the experiment. Yet, we have the audacity to hand down questionnaires and form policies based on this 'scientific' method. This is also why never an experiment has been replicated in social sciences. This is the same reason why one cannot replicate the same conversation in a coffee shop. Heck, even actors fail when they try to express the same thing over and over on camera. Too overgeneralized. Too over-simplified.
This is how this academia cancer multiples into other bullshit fields like Women's & Gender studies. The 'fields' simply appeared within academia in order to satisfy a specific social engineering agenda — much like it happened earlier with psychology and sociology. Social fields are simply descriptive, not scientific. They offer narratives about how society works, not falsifiable experiments that we can formulate theories. In no way they can be employed for anything useful because they are highly inconsistent. Wonder why most of these graduates serve coffee at Starbucks? Simply, outside of that safe-space academic Alice-in-Wonderland atrocity, nothing of that applies. Ever.
Recently even geologic and weather studies have been muddled up in order to support specific agendas in the political debate of climate change. Whether the findings are scientific or not became irrelevant. The public is so confused that nobody gives a fuck anymore. Who would have thought. A Liberal-green-Obama allowed the Kyoto treaty on the environment to fail while a conservative Trump is more open to change. This is how fucked up the whole thing gets and this is why it is important to keep an open mind in regards to how politics are involved.
I read a couple of scientific papers every day, since I tend to get triggered from pop-science literature. What I have come to understand after a decade or so, is that I can only trust the fields of engineering. They are solid. Applied science at its best, with no middle men, no hidden agendas, no vested interests. If one can build a machine based on scientific theories and the machine works then it is all good. If not, well, tough luck. With all the other fields is more like speculation. Opinion. Everyone makes grandiose claims, but no one really takes responsibility if something goes south. This is also the reason why there is such a huge mess in the social sphere of science.
Responsibility is a truly important factor in Science but it often gets downplayed. An engineer building a bridge is responsible for all the millions of people that will pass over and under it. His theories have to be tested, the hard way. If the bride fails, he will have to pay with his career and probably a lawsuit. On the other hand, in social sciences nobody cares because, "you know man, life is complicated"... This is highly hypocritical. On one hand they admit that society and humans are hard to evaluate and on the other hand they expect their evaluation to be passed as real Science.
Unless we as society start pushing real Science and actual responsibility in the things that affect our lives, Science is going to be poisoned by those who want to have control over the masses. Notice how liberals tend to be all "green, science, equality" and conservatives the exact opposite? This polarization offers a false narrative, often between good and evil, but it has nothing to do with reality but rather politics. Most liberals seems to be college students that know little about what is going in the upper strata of society. Most of them have not even held a real job. Yet, they rule what is going on in one of the most important shelters of science — Academia.
Academic institutions have become camping sites for naive young adults that believe schools should fulfill their dreams. They overpay for a useless paper that can be literally bought if you know the right people. Effectively it has become a giant shopping mall where the customer, which is the student, is always right. As a result, the funding offered for most fields derives from the state which itself has a specific agenda for keeping this lucrative enterprise of debt going.
Never before in history we have seen so many people desperately seeking education while being in so much debt with no prospect in paying it out. This is exactly what happens when you invent fields that have no application for the real world. This is exactly what happens when all the "science hype" dies and you are left with reality. This is how naive children believe that we are using the taxpayer money for building a space colony in Mars — in one of the most hostile environments — while on earth we can't even control a minor shift in temperature.
As long as I cherish Science, I will keep criticizing it. As long as these cheerleaders keep poisoning the fields with their academic bullshit we all owe to at least investigate that which is served to us. Possessing a scientific way of thinking is neither a pleasant deed nor one that can be taken lightly. It often entails examining endless and boring sets of data, not cool graphics on the Discovery channel. We are the ones shaping this society and we are mostly responsible for what goes on out there. At the end of the day, by not keeping a vigilant eye on the matter, we are getting exactly what we deserve.
Do you know who Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad are? They share your disdain for post-modernism entering science. Good read, thanks for posting.
Yeap, two of the greatest thinkers of our time.
Jordan Peterson's current lecture series on the Bible is amazing. The dude can talk for 2 hours about one verse. I don't think he'll ever make it out of Genesis
hahaha. i have so many of his videos on "watch later" list.
Yeah his podcast is really awesome I do a lot of driving so I get to listen to podcasts all day
He has a series, I forget the name now, a lecture. pretty awesome
This is the one I was referring to
Jordan Peterson would both totally disagree with this guy's cheating-business-for-hire, and disdain the way he ignores facts and attacks anyone who points out his error.
He used ad-hominem against me because I pointed out that he claimed the US caused a nuclear war with Russia. "It was a typo". LOL.
I have no objection at all of science being popularised and made accessible for eveyone. Science should be there for everyone and the beauty of science is sometimes also its simplicity and being able to explain it to everyone from kids to elderly.
Probably a bigger threat to science is the battle for the greatest minds and knowing that the financial industry can offer them the fatest paychecks :-)
Always seek the truth! Followed
You raise some valid and important points and questions. I might not agree with absolutely everything in your huge post, but even in those cases, I think you are asking important questions and we need to do a lot of digging before we can be sure of the right answers.
Everybody that uses the phrase "Sciense says..." is either oversimplifying at a particular moment or simply doesn't really understand how science works. A lot of the problems stem from the fact that the majority of the people simply do not understand the scientific process or the behinds-the-scenes politics of science that you talked about.
Universities (much like high schools) are becoming less relevant as time goes. Many of them are simply profitable businesses happily relying on false advertising while hiking up their prices.
I agree that a lot of the sciences, especially the social ones have "accepted" theories and paradigms that haven't been tested and proven enough. I also have experience helping people close to me out with papers and the like in the field of psychology and I was actually surprised and repulsed by the tiny sample sizes reputable university professors were using to support their hypotheses. Psychology is certainly in a crisis because of all the problems with studying humans you talked about. Additionally, there is very little incentive to repeat other people's experiments so you can validate their results which leads to a huge piece of the puzzle missing. I was thinking of doing a whole post dedicated on this topic and now after reading your post, I think that's what I'll do.
At last. Someone who gets it :)
Thanks! I think it's important to make the questions you pointed out known and understood by as many people as possible.
Well, I do but as you can see 90% of people are pissy :)
We are unfortunately. I do include myself in that category too, maybe not always, but sometimes for sure.
Followed...
I recently took a trip to NASA which I posted about and one of the engineers there who was working on the new SLS rocket said that he was retiring because he did not want to be a part of the next space race. Which as you said almost got us into a nuclear war_horable to think that history could repeat itself so frequently. Very intriguing, keep up the good writing.
Thank you man. Glad we have first hands experience here :)
This. You rarely see engineers blaming reality for not cooperating with a theory and then look expectantly at their machine to see if it has started working yet.
Even though engineering is applied science, it is also the ultimate Popperian test of theories, and thus in a way the most scientific field there is, together with the fields that test hypotheses in the engineering way.
Economists of any ilk need not apply.
Another thing: research by and from universities can be bought. If the results are not to a companies liking, the report will be buried and that university will have lost a source of income. Next time, the reports will look different, and "science" will have died a little more. Science is on order these days, partly because funding isn't independent and theories don't have to work anyway; all is fine as long as the requested story makes headlines.
I can't upvote this enough. Some people though in the past few days have a really tough time grasping reality in regards to what really goes on within academia.
Great article: Richard Feynman had similar concerns
yeap. i posted it above in another thread
Great debate that must be had. My wife is finishing up a PhD in Chemistry. Same story. The name of the game is getting published and there are some very perverse incentives at work! She needs to cite these but in alot of them there is no value : non reproducible conclusions and overall trivial level of importance.
Getting published is more about who you know really and in some institutions there is a lot of strong arming to mention the higher ups as co-authors while they barely know the contents!
What do you think about open-access ? Will it help ?
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-european-leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers
I think open access will transform research in ways we have yet to fathom.
I am glad i get perspectives from people that actually went through the process and see how the politics of science are getting in their way. Most people critiquing on here have not even attempted to make a grant proposal and really witness what science is all about in academia.
She is cooking up her own posts hehe will let you know when she posts them!
Verifying our understanding by building something and by predicting events are the only benchmarks I know of. If a claim does not go through that process, then it has not become a part of our solid, reliable knowledge. The claim may have a lot of usefulness, to be sure, but it has not gone through the scientific method.
Going through the scientific method is also not an either-or thing. The more a result is replicated under more and more conditions, the more certainty we can have about its validity.
So, as I see it, most of the claims of the social sciences and humanities have not gone through the scientific method and so I don't consider them a part of the reliable collection of knowledge that has been accumulated over the last few centuries. So personally I'm not that much bothered by whether some social science study has been faked or not. The study procedure was not designed to produce reliable knowledge to begin with.
Couldn't agree more.
I tend to agree. Reminds me of The Atlantic saying programmers shouldn't be called enginners and Wired asserting programmers have a far way to go to be engineers.
excellent
consensus doesn't necessarily make a fact.
but it is. it all comes down to human perception.
But Science is HHHHAAAAAAAARRRRRRDDDDDD.
I don't know how to type that and communicate the whiney way it needs to be said.
In my, obviously unimportant opinion, Elon Musk will do for "Science" what Bernie Madoff did for "Investing".
Right up to the point where it all comes crashing down.
I'm dumb enough to think that if your theory doesn't match your results, maybe there's something wrong with your theory.
But in today's "science" we'll just change what the theory was until we can make the data prove it, sort of, if you squint, and don't look at the data on the last 15 pages where we summarize.
lol. awesomely put
You struck a chord.
It's really hard when even the most brilliant scientists are used as media mouthpieces, Hawking is a good example of this.
And, Leonard Susskind. Turned one of his lectures into an anti-Trump rant because his wife suggested.
indeed, it is sicking some times
And, it is only getting worse, sad.
Part of good science is always asking questions and allowing for critiques. The problem is a lot of people have exchanged religion with science and use it the same way. Also I'm pretty sure if you are wealthy you probably can buy a degree from even the world's top universities. Money can open pretty much any door.
yeap. I am sure for example that is how most politicians like Bush went through Ivy League universities.
The irony of you stating this after detailing how you HELPED PEOPLE CHEAT TO BUY DEGREES BY WRITING DISSERTATIONS is staggering.
What Irony? I have no respect for academia. I don't forbid anything. free market yo. I just state how ridiculous things are and hence why science is in trouble.
you need to work on your deductive reasoning man.
Do you have any evidence that Bush paid a corrupt professor like you to fake his thesis?
Or are you just "fake news?"
This will answer more questions than you think
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/90909/-
Read it. No evidence. Only suspicion.
Conspiracy theory.
It's just a political hack article supporting the corrupt Clintons.
Bush is far from perfect, but there is no evidence that he paid a corrupt professor to write his thesis.
And idiots like you call it fact.
That's what fake news is all about.
You complain about others not using real science, but look in the mirror, your posts on steemit are mostly not using real science, just expressing biased opinions.
You are exactly what Richard Feynman was talking about.
You twist facts to make money and to justify your own corruption.
Your corrupt world view is pure evil.
You're just another snake in the grass.
Your time will come.
I feel sorry for you.
This post received a 5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @thecryptofiend! For more information, click here!
"He actively promotes the greatest paramilitary program on Earth, while the new generation forgets that last time this happened we ended causing a nuclear war with Russia."
What reality do you come from, and how do I get there?
What about the hypocrisy of championing the scientific method, while also falsifying academic submissions for profit?
Cold War., Space Race.
NASA is part of the US Military.
I am not here to teach basic history. I assume most people have the basics down.
Did anybody really end up causing a nuclear war with Russia, though? Has there ever been a nuclear war between the US and Russia? Of course not, yet you act like it's "basic history". How about you think before being an arrogant prick to others. Well, wouldn't expect much else from a guy writing fake master's theses for immoral students...
it was literally one push of a button away.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-who-saved-world-doing-5736621
How about you google before you type? Check link above. Maybe I should also write one for you.
You seem to have a problem admitting when you make a mistake. There was no nuclear war, "it being one push of a button away" is completely different, it means it didn't happen. Nobody's arguing about how bad the cold war was, the first commenter just pointed out your funny mistake. You made a slip of the tongue, but refuse to admit it. Pathetic, and extremely arrogant.
He sure does. He's arrogant and argues with feeling, not logic. Point out his fallacies, he will attack you. He's called me numerous names in the last day, such as hypocrite, implied I am a religious not, etc.
Do not bother expressing a different viewpoint than him, even if you are supported by fact. It is a waste of time.
I had a typo there. "Almost causing a Nuclear war with Russia"
come on
Great, had you noticed that for the first commenter instead of attacking him for pointing it out, this unfortunately vitriolic exchange would not have taken place. All the best to you anyway, I don't know why the whole thing pissed me off so much..
read this as well. think before you post for your own sake this time.
https://thespacereporter.com/2015/05/neil-de-grasse-tyson-advocates-militarized-space-race-mars/
How about you stop trying to push humans back into grass huts. Do you know how the internet was created? With MILITARY BUDGETS, just like most of the technology that has ever advanced humanity.
Your weird pacifistic technophobia would stop technological process, and if anyone had listened to you in the past, you would not be using the internet.
Have you heard the phrase "necessary evil"? That's what military research is. That's what space research is. Don't do it and your opponents will.
Childish.
"ARPANET was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
I am not. I cherish engineering. The heart of science. I mention it in my article if you bothered to read it. The internet was created after cumulative efforts of various individuals that eventfully ended up being manifested through the military. If it wasn't for those events some others would have occurred that also fulfilled that goal. It is called a technological tipping point. Same applies to Einstein and all the great discoverers. If it wasn't for them it would be someone due to the cumulative nature of how knowledge and technology emerges.
hur dur...
Yeah. Hitler advanced a lot of things as well. I wonder if you would offer yourself as soap for the "greater good".
I told you to upgrade your arguments mate. :) You are being pathetically pedantic.
Come on, even that link itself makes it clear he was joking. I saw this podcast live back then, he never for once "advocated a militarized space race". Indeed, he was actually criticizing and satirizing military races.
They were merely joking about hypotheticals and how if the Chinese were to build a military base on Mars, NASA will be on Mars well ahead of their 2030 schedule.
The point made was simple - NASA's potential is far greater than currently exploited. That's a pretty fair assessment, given how the original Space Race sent NASA to the moon decades before it was scheduled. This was then done by boosting NASA's budget to 4% of the total GDP back then.
I love your posts, you're one of my favourite authors on Steemit, but I'm bothered by these little confirmation biases that you exhibit here and there. I hope you take it as constructive criticism.
He wasn't joking. He was actually very serious and framed the whole thing under the important of taxation and making America the no.1 nation. He was super patriotic as well. I have clips of the video.
https://www.facebook.com/CyprusFreeThinkers/videos/vb.346542594097/10153798702724098/?type=2&theater
Haha, that's some serious Leni Riefenstahl style propaganda editing right there :)
Watch his speech again and tell me that he is not patriotic about the whole thing. :)
Sure, no doubt about that, after all that's his certain argument for this speech - how NASA funding benefits the US economy.
Still, he never said anything like "let's go to war". He was simply making a point, an accurate one, like I mentioned above. I have seen him make this point in other places where it was more obvious it was hypothetical and satirical.
"Almost" causing a nuclear war with Russia. You knew it was a typo.
You just chose to play it this way due to our last debate.
cheap
Also, in regards to money. I don't consider what I did to be scientific. For me it was descriptive essays. I don't recognize the thing called "social sciences".
Richard Feynman also agrees with me
No, I didn't. Stop assassinating my character. I didn't know what the hell you meant, because what you stated, was openly against accepted fact.
For all I knew, you were making a statement on Hiroshima.
If you want people to know what you mean, say what you mean. Don't blame others for leaving out a critical word that CHANGES THE WHOLE MEANING OF YOUR CLAIM.
He is using Richard Feynman to justify his own corruption.
There's no evidence that RIchard Feynman was ever corrupt like kyriacos is.
We can all agree that there are many problems with academia. kyriacos is one of them.
Yeah, yeah right...
as much as i like the pessimistic view of the now occurring situation i would point out that science is ALWAYS UNDER ATTACK for that matter. i think that the job of the sciences is to FIND, CONFERM AND PROTECT the hard truth from all the pseudo-pop-politic sciences - truth - stories. scientists are like artists, always searching for some truth with their minds and hearts, underpaid (except for the contractors: science/military - industry, artists/church -advertisment) and on the margin of society becouse they are pushing and pulling the beliefs in which we live in. chasing the everchanging truth.
you can buy the paper, the story and the people but THE TRUTH CANNOT BE BOUGHT. time will tell and real science should remain unaffected by market, politics and society. and society always follows the truth becouse there is no other way (there is denial, but: Regardless of how far a person runs, a lie will eventually catch up to them. —Donald L. Hicks)
we need your vigilant eye so we can sleep peacefully and dream the stories we are told, knowing there is somebody who will shake us when the house is burning.
thank you
thank you for your thoughtful comment.
How do you suggest we make the methodologies of science known to more people? It seems a great challenge indeed. Popularization of science often fails to change how people think about the subject matter. A geologist probably has a completely different way of thinking about mountains and rivers than the average person. Most importantly, the way a geologist would go about studying a mountain would be very different. The average person might rely on a lot of things that the geologist considers unreliable. So, a lot of science popularization unfortunately doesn't go much beyond the level of interesting facts, which seems the least hard to teach.
As I see it, we are in great deficit of science educators. And especially people who can talk, in an accessible and interesting way, on the level of methodology and ways of thinking.
why do anything? the internet is there for anyone to explore the methods if one is interested.
of course. people choose what to believe.
I don't think we should force science to the general public. it is not for everyone.
Don't you think society is in great trouble if most of the public has poor science and technological literacy?
No, I think the biggest thread to humanity is an increased population relative to resources. This is true for all species.
BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY
"It is sometimes easier to circumvent prevailing difficulties (in science) rather than to attack them" Jacobus Hoff.
:)
Hi @kyriacos, my husband @the-traveller showed me this article and it made me think a lot: it inspired me to write this post
https://steemit.com/science/@lys/so-you-wanted-to-be-a-scientist-let-me-tell-you-what-s-happening-in-academia-today
excellent @lys . glad i served as an inspiration to you. Very well put in your article. I knew I wasn't alone :)
I agree with many of the ideas you mention, but I don't think anything will change soon.
If I could ask a question, what would you say needs to change for Science to start regaining its position?
Thanks for sharing! ^^
I don't agree with all of your opinions, but I enjoy your passion. Great post!
Feminism and Multiculturalism are the two extreme ideologies the destroy everything in our culture, science included.
If you dare express a different opinion, you risk your job and, sometimes, your life.
I am not sure about the latter but they have definitely affected the way academia works.
Follow me for the latest in tech news from my paid subscriptions to Barrons, the Wall Street Journal and many more..
So really thru you and others like you who write papers that further work in a field, the "writers" are moving science in a direction its moved by money, seems like all science is moved by money interest of the bankster but now I see that thru this method of yours; many, "small businesses" or, "Theses Hackers", or "Theses hijackers" get to vote for the direction of science!
Followed & Upvoted
Follow back please :) and upvote one of my blogs thankyou ;)
@thecrytotrader
thank you
nice story. keep it up sir
Thank you for this thoughtful look at your experience. Do you have any ideas on how to fix it?
nop
Interesting read! (But to come to the defence of the coolest guy in astronomy and his field(s), astrobiology doesn't just look for carbon-based life, check out the info on TRAPPIST-1h (a planet with hydrogen volcanoes). I think we should carry guys like Neil de Grass Tyson on a golden plate, especially in world in which everybody uses computers, the internet and microwaves, but 77% of Americans still believe in angels.
the thing is, guys like Neil de grasse Tyson do a disservice to the atheist communities by being a pretentious, condescending douche, and he isn't exactly converting angel believers to atheism either. All he's doing is affirming the pre-existing beliefs that a dogmatic crowd carries. These people are basically "believers" of pseudoscience and they worship their "science guys" with no real understanding or appreciation of the real science.
Guys like him and Bill Nye aren't helping anyone, apart from the media outlets that pay them. Cult personalities are never good for science
THANK YOU
couldn't have said it better my self.
still, no life. might as well call it extra-geology. but hey..doesn't sound as cool...
"He actively promotes the greatest paramilitary program on Earth, while the new generation forgets that last time this happened we ended causing a nuclear war with Russia."???
Space race
https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/cold/articles/godwin.html
Great post
thank you
Don't know how much the people here know about your real-life identity or how much you want them to know, so I'll ask this covertly: these students you write essays for, are they enrolled in backwoods universities in a boondocks country whose name nobody knows? From my experience, it would be much harder to write essays for top-level universities, and also it's much easier to write those kinds of essays for first-year undergraduate students. Also, can you do the same with master's degrees and PhDs as easily? The higher up you go in academia (i.e., where the science really matters), the more difficult it is to get away with schemes of that sort. I mean, how does Science suffer if an undergraduate earns a fake degree? The real world suffers, and the reputation of the discipline suffers—but the science itself couldn't care less about an ignorant undergrad.
"Human behavior changes depending on what we ate last night, if we got laid and what magazine we read in the waiting room before the experiment."
Which hard science made this discovery? Was it biology, chemistry, or physics?
I did it also for universities in Australia, Japan and USA.
I did 4 masters. No Phd's
it does. because if I am doing it, its happening in all levels. I know some people that do PhDs actually for a very good pay. A PhD is nothing really. Just needs persistence. Anyone can get a PhD, especially in social 'sciences'
Use google. no need to troll. I assume you should be familiar with the basics..you know, having written a book and all. ..
Well your first two answers prove your point, and it's sad.
About the third one, I'm not trolling, that's your neck of the woods! It just seemed odd to me that you'd try and discredit the social sciences based on research done by the social sciences (e.g. daniel kahneman etc.)
I was doing it for money. The thousands in my pockets did not seem sad.
I can discredit social sciences as "sciences". They are simply descriptive fields. NOT scientific. And guess what. I just did with plenty of examples why they cannot be scientific. Care to upgrade your counter-arguments and put that philosophy degree to (any) use?
Well it seems like you vacillate between the 'soft' point that these disciplines simply shouldn't use the moniker 'science', and the 'harder' point that these disciplines shouldn't be funded period. If you're arguing for the latter point, then, since I already mentioned (the Nobel prize winning psychologist) Daniel Kahneman, you could maybe try and explain to me why you think his discoveries are unimportant and why we shouldn't care about them.
I don't care if they do. I am just pointing the flaw out.
titles and contexts don't mean shit. You are appealing to authority to win an argument. It's sad. Learn to argue based on my arguments no based on "Look but but this guy got a Nobel, he is important!"
But hey, I guess you have to learn a bit about the Nobel charade as well. You seriously need to do some reading man.
Start with this. If you want to continue the argument before you google, you won't like my next link.
https://heatst.com/world/bob-dylans-nobel-prize-is-a-joke-even-he-thinks-so/
I wasn't making the argument you're accusing me of! Yeah I mentioned his Nobel prize (in parentheses) but that was beside the point. I actually read the guy's research and it's very instructive, and in fact I think you'd love it! You could try reading his book Thinking fast and slow if you got the time and appetite. I don't care shit for nobel prizes etc. tbh.
I only mentioned him in the first place cos you were basically quoting research he was involved in (judges being influenced in their verdicts according to the time they had lunch etc.) : http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889.full
there,
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/how-food-affects-your-moods
http://www.health.com/sex/8-ways-sex-affects-your-brain
Good post and interesting to read ....thanks @kyriacos
thank you
Thanks again...
thank you for good posting
We make the science!
This has been a trend since leaded gasoline and cigarettes really. Big money blocking truth for the purpose of more money. "let the good times roll" even if that means defaming credible scientists, theories, and whole sections of the population who have what is called empathy.
I have read many comments by people pushed out of the astronomy field echoing your concerns.
And now with the denial of sound judgement I don't know what to do about our future. its exactly how they want it
There are vested interests everywhere. Can't really stop it.
Ooh
You have a nice and best post
INTERESANTE POST
Thanks for the thought-provoking article.
I remember a story from the 1990s, when I was in grad school (civil engineering) at Princeton. An undergrad got caught submitted a senior thesis that he had bought. He left the receipt in the thesis when he submitted it!
Post-modernist academia is an insidious mess!
However, I don't quite agree that all of psychology is bogus. Experimental psychology, as done by Daniel Kahneman, for example, has I think produced valuable knowledge. Unfortunately that knowledge is used all to effectively to create propaganda and shape the opinions of the masses. For example, see my previous post about Sensationalism and Availability Cascades.
Thing is, most people tend to ignore these circumstances and rather wish to believe that academia is pure.
I can make a case that almost all psychology is bullshit. The themes that do have solid grounds are the ones about anthropology.
Too much corruption, even in science.
The love of money even drives some profs to write fake thesis to aid some spoiled rich kids to be fake experts with degrees they didn't earn.
It's good you're coming clean, but maybe you should expose all those fakers you helped get advanced degrees they didn't earn nor deserve.
Tesla died broke while many money lovers wallowed in luxury.
Money is not evil. Money can be a real Blessing
It's the love of money that is evil.
Many people with integrity have earned their riches doing good.
So don't hate the rich.
Corruption in all fields needs to be exposed.
Please help drain the swamp.
I don't care really about what happens in academia because I consider the whole thing to be a joke. Only a handful of fields matter and those can exist with or without the academic environment.
That's a lame excuse for making a lot of dishonest money.
Cops overwhelmed by corruption become corrupt. Is that ok?
Politicians overwhelmed by corruption become corrupt. Is that ok?
Gang bangers see corruption around them thus justifying their own corruption. Is that ok?
Dishonest professors that make money to write fake thesis for dishonest students should be fired and put in prison.
Nothing dishonest really. There was a need to make a paper for an institution that issues "degrees" and I did it. The customer evaluated that institution as worthy and honorable. I don't.
ofcourse is ok. We all get corrupt one way or another.
yeap.
yeap.
what should happen and what does happen are two different things. The only reason you believe they should be put in prison is because you value academia as a "pure" institution. same about cops and politicians that you mentioned above.
Thing is, none of these institutions are pure. heck, their own essence is based on corruption. this is how and why they got to exist.
This is rather unfortunate and upsetting. I would be certain a student was severely punished for plagiarism--in this case the paying for someone else's writing. Although I do feel the single biggest threat to science is the contest put forth by administrative entities that depend on impact factors to decide the worth of a scientist. Would you judge a students worth based off of a GPA alone? I hope not as these are found to determine a students demographic information and tells you nothing of academic skills other than the ability to take an exam well--there is plenty of research in this area; please look into it! For those of us that didn't pay our way through, I can assure grad school is a difficult job if not the most difficult job requiring teaching and research, which results often in 14 hour days and no breaks on weekends. Not many people would work 60-70 hours a week on that salary, i.e., no overtime pay. Another observation made here is that those of us that do well typically knew how to roll up our sleeves before hand.
Not only does this number not represent a scientist worth but also encourages the quick and dirty publishing in 'journals' such as Science Magazine and Nature--the impact factor for these are high. We call these articles 'tabloid science' and often say that they don't count (unfortunately they do for impact factors), and these articles usually result in the real paper being published a couple years later. There is also a way that they count social media popularization and use this against scientific employment as well, and this results in pornographic titles and subjects. We often reach for the stars when basic observations on our planet have yet to be mentioned.
Impact factors play a huge role in employment. I am a scientist and can assure you I do not have a desire for anything over 35k a year. This will also mean I will be paying student loans and left with little, but I don't care as I love what I do. Many others are like this as well, but definitely make more. We don't get any benefits from grants other than spending available for research supplies--if you go outside of this or try taking money, you can say goodbye to your career. This is unfortunately competitive as funding is limited by government. Donations help alot, but the majority of funding is governmental. Drop the subjects space or climate change in a grant, likelihood of obtaining funds probably increases.
I too believe that science should be made available to all, and I think the best way to achieve a cleaner community is to distribute spending to all, ridding the system of impact factors, and most importantly of all, promoting and teaching scientific literacy to those at the high school level. Scientific literacy and availability of articles would alleviate the need for popular science.
On a side note, please don't refer to climate change as a 'minor' temperature change--I think you were trying to make a point using this but wasn't entirely sure and apologize if it was satire. As someone who studies the past, I would suggest anyone do more reading here.
Although there are problems I can assure you some of us fight the good fight, and I won't stop.
I can't applaud this enough. Exactly my thoughts.
Thank you for mentioning this. Many people seem to ignore how popular subjects that tend to be politically inflated get all the money
I was making satire since Mar's environment will much harder to control.
Thank you for the replies, @kyriacos. Also, I sincerely appreciate the satire.
you are welcome
One thing that I failed to mention:
Publishing companies are the reason scientific articles are not available to all. They used to serve as a mediator of peer review and editing alone; they do still serve this purpose, but scientist must pay to publish. Publishing companies then charge non-paying members an often high fee to view the article. This is a double whammy that no one enjoys. And no, we get no monetary reward for views, etc. We simply get to keep our jobs.
I know. Experienced it for a while.
I'm just gonna say that "I Hate Science".
Goood post
thank you
You are welcome kyriacos
I think a lot of the problem is because science and truth are now mutually exclusive.
All science is now is corporate funded, agenda driven and has no basis at all in truth. There is no purity in science any more.
yeap. Before science was performed for the same of exploration. Today, other interests are in place
I dream of a time when science may actually be used to benefit us and the world we live on, instead of the global elite and their corporate interests.
Science overall still benefits us even if vested interests persist
No where near to the extent it should be. It's too agenda driven now. The lie of global warming and the field of medicine are prime examples. Any science that disproves global warming is shunned and only science that shows its existence is supported. Medicine is even more skewed, with natural medicines that actually cure being ignored for those that can be patented, even though they never actually cure anything and only manage symptoms.
Science is about dollars and not about truth.
In a large extend it is.
Hmm, that's an eyeopener. I generally pass on such long posts, but I read this one. I agree with most things you said in the post.
Glad you liked it
I share many of the view with you, science should really be improving everyone's life, instead of just aiming for publications and satisfying grants needs.
I also work in the academia in the field of science, and often see students who were full of passion for research get ruined after a few years of the "commercialised academic life".
Studying science is hard, but understand what it can bring upon us can be easy~
witnessed this myself first hand.
Been there and done that too, hope we could make some changes starting from here~
Though I do agree with a lot of it, and I share a lot of disdain for the business model of education that now exists, especially here in China, a lot of your disdain for current scientific fields appears to be coming from a lack of understanding of what it is.
For example, you say Astrobiology isn't science because how can we study something we don't know exists? But that's not what Astrobiology is, once you look past the actual title.
Astrobiology is the study of life on earth and the Universe. It doesn't mean, seeking life. But it does mean, for example, finding complex molecules on other planets, figuring out the chemical components and amino acids on asteroids, how life here may survive in space, what are the environmental limits on the human body, and it generally plays a crucial role in manned missions, space suit designs and so forth.
To say that's useless and should be replaced seems a little naive.
The same goes for Psychology, which you write off as obsolete. But if you've ever had a sibling or friend suffering from various mental conditions like I seem to be surrounded by, Neurobiology isn't the field you want to be looking into. Psychology grants a greater understanding of human nature and what we are. This plays a crucial and sometimes life-saving role in childhood development for example, as well as helping with the development of drugs for conditions like Parkinson's.
It's not that one should replace another, they should instead work with each other, which is precisely what they do.
I understand that you're coming from a rather jaded point of view, which is really pretty understandable, but if there's one thing in the world we should put our respect into, it's science. As flawed as it is, that is a result of the human component, but it's a self-correcting mechanism and that's what we should come to expect.
To fight for a world where there's some unflawed system where everything is pure and perfect is a dream, unfortunately, but I feel the way things are, are pretty much as good as they're going to get (aside from a re-balancing of budgeting and reformation of education).
"Due to the fact that the scientific method is the best tool humanity has ever come up with, opportunists have found a way to abuse it."
That hit a big giant nail right on the head :o)
Michael
:)
I think the bright side here is that you got to write on a variety of subjects. I sincerely hope you enjoyed learning across a variety of fields.
yeap. This is how most of these topics have popped up really. Studying for other people made me realized that much of what is being taught in academia is bullshit.