One caveat - in the notes - I think a really good liberal arts education can be very valuable; not all students belong in STEM.
To summarize, John D. Skrentny is a meatball. It's important, when considering artsmen criticizing STEM, to remember what Feynman said: “philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”
Look around you - so many things that make your life easier, better and more fun came from STEM: the Internet, search engines, email, texting, smartphones, computers, large tv's, smart cars, online banking and shopping, ...
The sad truth is that a lot of what goes on in academic STEM is just a parlour game - publishing papers to keep the grant money rolling in. Practical utility is only infrequently a factor; a genuine search for truth even more rarely enters into it.
Then as you note, there's the woke infiltration. Essentially all of the younger professors I've known are fully on board with woke. As a rule they're minimally competent, but genius is rare. Many of course were hired, or should I say included, on the strength of their diverse characteristics. They're certainly not generating any profound advances. Meanwhile, they're filling the pipeline with as many diverse grad students as they can find, while pressuring their departments to dilute undergraduate and graduate curricula to ensure their diverse students can get the credentials that make them Officially Intelligent Scientists.
At the same time the national granting agencies, also thoroughly penetrated by woke, are now insisting on obeisance to social justice in order to get scientific funding, e.g. via 'broader impact' requirements for NSF grants.
It's all well and good to preen about how much more important and valuable STEM is as compared to the humanities. There was a time in which I would have agreed. Yet who has the whip hand, now? We conceded the humanities departments to the anti-civilization marxoids; they turned them into brain-washing centers; their fanatical hordes then spread into administrative and educational positions; and now the prevailing ideology inside the STEM departments is anti-civilizational gay race communism.
"The most common statement that I hear from members of the public is, "Wow, that sounds complicated. Is it good for anything?" after I have told them what I do in STEM."
Just curious, since you are using a nom de plume, what DO you do in STEM?
It’s a way of looking at problems and the thought process for solving them. Not all people can do, or are interested in, those things. They shy away from STEM.
OK, now saw in the comments he is using a fake name. Says a lot that an emeritus prof has so much fear to use his real identity while attacking others by name! I am NOT impressed. Would also suggest readers look at the University of Chicago blog interview with the sociologist from last December. A bit more nuanced than the screed suggests.
I find it useful to compare the annual budget of NSF, or NASA, or DOE, to that of the R&D expenditures of any randomly selected large STEM-oriented multinational corporation. For example, Microsoft = 2xNSF. Pick another, get a similar answer. Oracle = 0.5 * NSF. Pfizer = 1.0 * NSF. Businesses' R&D in aggregate tops $600B annually in the US alone. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23350
This is a good article, if anything too mild on the Skrentny fellow and everything he represents.
Two things I have a bit of an issue on. First, Skrentny does not in any shape or form represent philosophy of science. Philosophy of science, when done properly, is a serious magisterium, and we're talking the level of seriousness which will not be attained in social science in the course of this millennium if ever. One needs just to take a peek into a book like https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bangs-crunches-whimpers-and-shrieks-9780195095913?cc=us&lang=en& to see how obviously true that is. While one could criticize some of the currents and schools of thought within philosophy of science, such a criticism has nothing to do with the woke mind virus.
The second thing is that it is not at all necessary to invoke Graeber's book to explain the concept of bullshit jobs. To any of us who lived under non-free market economic regimes, such concepts are very familiar - government creates an infinity of bullshit jobs some of which are just police informants painted over, the other serve to maintain the subsistence standards of living and to celebrate the ruling party who's providing jobs out of goodness of its heart.
Your game seems to be personal attacks and fearful hiding. Sorry I engaged in what I thought would be an interchange with a scholarly guy interested in what I think Heterodox STEM represents, not just pontificating to the choir. I think the self-inflation goes the other way, as well as your contempt for anyone who disagrees with you. Sad.
I cannot find that Stanley Livingstone College even exists (though a Livingstone College does) and Alan Beado may not either. Unlike his target, who actually is pretty well published as a sociologist, Beado has absolutely no scholarly presence at all (Google Scholar), as I far as I can see using the internet. A fake name for the author? Await clarification and correction if I am wrong.
Excellent critique.
One caveat - in the notes - I think a really good liberal arts education can be very valuable; not all students belong in STEM.
To summarize, John D. Skrentny is a meatball. It's important, when considering artsmen criticizing STEM, to remember what Feynman said: “philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”
Look around you - so many things that make your life easier, better and more fun came from STEM: the Internet, search engines, email, texting, smartphones, computers, large tv's, smart cars, online banking and shopping, ...
The sad truth is that a lot of what goes on in academic STEM is just a parlour game - publishing papers to keep the grant money rolling in. Practical utility is only infrequently a factor; a genuine search for truth even more rarely enters into it.
Then as you note, there's the woke infiltration. Essentially all of the younger professors I've known are fully on board with woke. As a rule they're minimally competent, but genius is rare. Many of course were hired, or should I say included, on the strength of their diverse characteristics. They're certainly not generating any profound advances. Meanwhile, they're filling the pipeline with as many diverse grad students as they can find, while pressuring their departments to dilute undergraduate and graduate curricula to ensure their diverse students can get the credentials that make them Officially Intelligent Scientists.
At the same time the national granting agencies, also thoroughly penetrated by woke, are now insisting on obeisance to social justice in order to get scientific funding, e.g. via 'broader impact' requirements for NSF grants.
It's all well and good to preen about how much more important and valuable STEM is as compared to the humanities. There was a time in which I would have agreed. Yet who has the whip hand, now? We conceded the humanities departments to the anti-civilization marxoids; they turned them into brain-washing centers; their fanatical hordes then spread into administrative and educational positions; and now the prevailing ideology inside the STEM departments is anti-civilizational gay race communism.
As STEM is the process by 'which mankind discovers truths. it is opposed by people who profit from telling lies.
Terry Oldberg
Engineer/Scientist/Public Policy Reseaarcher
1-650-519=6635
(Pacific Time Zone)
"The most common statement that I hear from members of the public is, "Wow, that sounds complicated. Is it good for anything?" after I have told them what I do in STEM."
Just curious, since you are using a nom de plume, what DO you do in STEM?
The sociology prof reminds me of a saying:
"Those who study society often are a burden on it"
It’s a way of looking at problems and the thought process for solving them. Not all people can do, or are interested in, those things. They shy away from STEM.
OK, now saw in the comments he is using a fake name. Says a lot that an emeritus prof has so much fear to use his real identity while attacking others by name! I am NOT impressed. Would also suggest readers look at the University of Chicago blog interview with the sociologist from last December. A bit more nuanced than the screed suggests.
I find it useful to compare the annual budget of NSF, or NASA, or DOE, to that of the R&D expenditures of any randomly selected large STEM-oriented multinational corporation. For example, Microsoft = 2xNSF. Pick another, get a similar answer. Oracle = 0.5 * NSF. Pfizer = 1.0 * NSF. Businesses' R&D in aggregate tops $600B annually in the US alone. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23350
This is a good article, if anything too mild on the Skrentny fellow and everything he represents.
Two things I have a bit of an issue on. First, Skrentny does not in any shape or form represent philosophy of science. Philosophy of science, when done properly, is a serious magisterium, and we're talking the level of seriousness which will not be attained in social science in the course of this millennium if ever. One needs just to take a peek into a book like https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bangs-crunches-whimpers-and-shrieks-9780195095913?cc=us&lang=en& to see how obviously true that is. While one could criticize some of the currents and schools of thought within philosophy of science, such a criticism has nothing to do with the woke mind virus.
The second thing is that it is not at all necessary to invoke Graeber's book to explain the concept of bullshit jobs. To any of us who lived under non-free market economic regimes, such concepts are very familiar - government creates an infinity of bullshit jobs some of which are just police informants painted over, the other serve to maintain the subsistence standards of living and to celebrate the ruling party who's providing jobs out of goodness of its heart.
Your game seems to be personal attacks and fearful hiding. Sorry I engaged in what I thought would be an interchange with a scholarly guy interested in what I think Heterodox STEM represents, not just pontificating to the choir. I think the self-inflation goes the other way, as well as your contempt for anyone who disagrees with you. Sad.
I cannot find that Stanley Livingstone College even exists (though a Livingstone College does) and Alan Beado may not either. Unlike his target, who actually is pretty well published as a sociologist, Beado has absolutely no scholarly presence at all (Google Scholar), as I far as I can see using the internet. A fake name for the author? Await clarification and correction if I am wrong.