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, ...
But ornithology can help non-birds understand birds better. We recently had two spacecraft topple over on touchdown on the lunar surface, with shouts of "success" from the space agencies (JAXA and NASA) ringing a bit hollow. But public support for these endeavors is helped by their understanding that failure _is_ often an option, and STEM embraces an iterative process. I am confident that subsequent Moon missions will end up right-side-up from now on, which is good news for astronauts. If these two(!) missions had landed uneventfully by happenstance, a bigger failure may have been waiting for us in the future. That is the take-away that the public should understand, and that space agency new conferences should communicate.
I don't think the public thinks that STEM is perfect, especially after the public health authorities covered themselves in rot (don't wear masks - you must wear masks - wear two masks; banning travel to China is racist - travel to China is banned; ...) during the covid pandemic.
Failure is an undesirable option, even though all know that it does and will occur. Avoiding failure is a much better option, when possible.
Ornithologists can help, if that's their real purpose; as opposed to being arrogant commissars.
"Public health officials" are not STEM practitioners, the same way that flying squirrels are not birds. Some of the contradictory messaging came from the iterative process of science, but got mangled by the "arrogant commissars". Science, when unfettered, can change its ideas in the light of new information, and that should be understood by the US public as a strength, not a weakness.
And the best way to avoid failure is not to try, or try once and then give up when it doesn't work! I know way too Gen Z'ers who live that way...
(I'm feeling a bit snarly today; I'm sure we agree on most points, including the main one that STEM does have value!)
STEM really includes biology, biochem, pharma and medicine. And the national public health authorities are supposed to be the most eminent of doctors. So yes, they are STEM practitioners. The problem is that they allowed themselves to be corrupted by politicians.
Science is like a fuzzy sphere with hairs on it. The outer layer - leading-edge research - is softish and changing; the inner layer - proven laws - is hard and rarely changes.
Failure happens, especially at the leading edge. Accepting that and persisting is great. But celebrating failure is not. Aim for success, and persist.
Public health officials may be midwit bureaucrats wrapping themselves in the mantle of Science, but actual scientists in my experience were only too happy to go along with it all. Enthusiastic even.
Same with the DIE stuff, climate change, etc. etc.
I don't like Rufo's suggestion, mainly because I've become violently allergic to 'equality'. Instead, I propose Merit, Opportunity, and Glory, with which the Marxcissist hordes can be MOGged.
Yes, not all students belong in STEM. And as I will point out in a later essay, people who are not doing the "heavy lifting" in STEM still can have "a place" in STEM, but in assorted support positions. For example, there is a need for R&D accounting and customer relations and proposal support and research assistants and production coders and security staff and all kinds of other stuff. There literally is a place in R&D (depending on the size of the R&D enterprise), for almost everyone. But as you point out, not everyone is suited to being an R&D "worker bee", however.
An essay to follow will address this question of a "liberal arts education". That essay is not that long; perhaps I should have included more detail. We will see how it is received.
However, before my essay on the liberal arts comes out in a week or so, consider the following. Countries outside the US for the most part disdain the "liberal arts education" paradigm. In those places, if you want to study History, you study History. If you want to study German, you study German. If you want to study Mechanical Engineering, you study Mechanical Engineering. Of course, there is a selection of ancillary topics from other fields that are necessary in each of these cases.
However, the American approach of a smorgasboard of random disconnected topics with no depth taken over 3 or 4 years is ridiculous and pointless. The only exceptions might be the "legacies" with trust funds. And they do not really "need" a college education at all. It is just a way for them to get some minimal amount of polish so they are less embarrassing to their elders before setting out into the world.
I might mention that one of our worst mistakes, in the last few decades, was to let these "support staff" and "administrative staff" take complete control of STEM. They do all the hiring. They do all the firing. They decide on the metrics that are used for evaluation. They impose all the rules like DEI and other dopey distractions. They demand everyone spend endless hours on committee work (one job offer I received for a faculty position mandated an inescapable 80-120 hours per week of committee work, before the person was even permitted to do any "real" work; every single person in the department was subject to this requirement and the chairman was quite proud of it). They decide what and who to fund. They decide what people should work on (or must work on) and what methods they should or can or even will use. They even try to dictate what results will be obtained from a given study and when the breakthroughs should or even must occur.
It all has to be precisely planned, like making widgets on an assembly line.
It all sounds great, sort of, except that there will be nothing productive or very little useful that comes out of such a system.
These administrative people and assorted support people are paid 2 or 3 or 4 or more times as much as the technical people. And they never raise any money or do any teaching or publish anything or do any research. They often have zero technical background, or they were so incompetent at technical work that they willingly migrated into these positions of power. They also cannot be fired. And they make the rules, which do not apply to them personally.
Their opinions are often just nonsense. One I worked for thought that no "real scientist" should ever use an equation, and as a result, he punished me for doing so. Another thought his deputy's wife's business in breeding and raising dogs was a conflict of interest for her husband's STEM job, so he ordered the husband to shut down the business and kill all the dogs. One sang me the "Mickey Mouse Club" song for learning about and using statistics (I have heard this from many technical people; there is a tremendous allergy among some administrators to statistics, apparently). One wanted to dictate what the content of my lectures would be in my field of expertise, even though they had zero background and were full of nonsense. One told me that in his division, they would not permit any of that "PhD bullshit...get that through your goddamned fucking stupid brain". He also told me that he did not care if the multibillion dollar project (promising extreme results to the customer) worked, he just wanted to "make money". One was super excited about the term "big data" that he had read about in the popular press and wanted me, in a sentence or two, to tell all his teaching staff how to open this "magic door" to huge money and jobs for the students (without understanding anything or doing any work or preparation).
How did we get in the place where these people have been given infinite power and cannot be contradicted or chastised?
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.
There is unfortunately a LOT of truth to this comment. STEM R&D is in a lot of trouble in the West. We better think about how to get our house in order.
I will address this topic in a series of essays that hopefully will follow.
First, it needs to move, as much as possible, out of the academy. A pivot to crowdsourced or private patron funding, as opposed to government grants, is essential - it will help to refocus science on what is interesting and useful, and to enable a greater diversity of topics to be researched by teams with greater independence, operating more like eg lawyers or dentists with private practices.
The peer review system is outdated and irrelevant. It needs to be abandoned. Professional status should be assigned by actual contributions, not number of papers etc. Focus should be on quality, not quantity, of publication. Just let scientists use blogs, remove status from quantity of written material, and assign it to achievements that actually matter.
Quite frankly, a cultural counteroffensive against the humanities is absolutely necessary. They need to recaptured and rendered sane again. Doing this will require technically trained individuals - who by and large are in fact our best and brightest - to educate themselves in the humanities, providing themselves the classical education they should have received in the first place, and learning the arts of rhetoric, communication, composition, and so on. This is already happening I think - much of the dissident right is composed of polymaths with STEM backgrounds who have turned their talents to cultural warfare. In the long run this is the most essential element of this struggle for civilization. As it is, the left has had unfettered access to the imaginations of the people, and it has poisoned them deeply.
Yes, you are right on the money. This is a brilliant comment. You easily could have been reading my next few essays.
If one follows James Lindsay, who has a PhD in mathematics, but has been educating himself in philosophy and history to counter-attack the woke on their own turf, one can see at least one example of what you are suggesting.
Also if one looks at the Weizmann Institute in Israel or IST in Austria, you see where the proper organization of STEM can lead to completely self-funded institutions. One can shed all the foolish administrators (both Stanford and Yale now have more administrators than students, apparently) and the assorted intellectual clowns one finds heavily represented in fields outside of STEM (the original goal of UCSD, by the way, if you look at its foundational principles, was to avoid this) and allow STEM people to do their work unfettered by deadweight.
I have been asked about 15 times by the Governor's Office in my state to sit on a committee overseeing all higher education in my state (for no pay, of course). I took one look at who else was on the committee and I knew immediately that I would be wasting my time. I would be forced to sit there, mute, for hours on end every month, while people who openly hate my guts spew nonsense and make threats and be generally obnoxious and rude. If I dared to speak up (or even possibly if I remained silent), they would have wanted to tar and feather me. And that would have been the outcome if I was lucky.
I've been thinking about these matters for a while, and writing on it now and then in my own colorful fashion. Also ranting about this to my colleagues, though in general they are all heavily institutionalized - low openness, high agreeability, high neuroticism is the typical personality profile in STEM right now, sadly. They're all too timid to reform things.
Lindsay is certainly an example of what I'm talking about, albeit a bit milquetoast when it comes to prescription (also he blocked me on Twitter lol ... he doesn't take criticism from his right flank well).
The admin situation is cancer. Almost literally. A metastasized tumour that needs to be excised and burned.
Self-governing STEM research institutes is definitely a model worth building on. We need something similar in the humanities, but with a return to ruthless meritocracy at the admissions level - no more taking every warm body, using the humanities departments as dumping grounds for the low-talent dross dragged in by student loans programs. Train up a generation of intellectual knights templar to fight the culture war with every philosophical and literary tool at their disposal.
There are plenty of my colleagues who would agree with your "cancer" comment. They just are too cautious to say it in public. What they say in private would shock most people. But they have suffered mightily at the hands of these incompetent know-nothing bureaucrats. So I guess it is to be expected.
In my opinion you are striking the correct chord. I can tell you have been thinking about this, as I have for the last several years.
I am even working on an institution/enterprise to do exactly this right now. I have been creating some of the important components and elements over the last decade or more. I have written a LOT of material about this. And I have made some progress on important projects. We need resources and leverage that comes with resources. And so, I might be able to provide some of that. We will see.
My colleagues feel pretty much the same way yours do. They tolerate my ranting, at least somewhat anyway, since I am a bit of a "heavyweight" in our discipline. I am sort of the rainmaker, or potential economic engine. So they bite their tongues and try to steer me in less confrontational directions. They probably view me as inappropriately obstinate and fixated on irrelevant stuff.
They are probably correct. I have to be a bit more reasonable. One chastised me for responding to the malcontent from Tennessee who was defending the anti-STEM sociologist who thinks the answer to the problems in STEM is just more wokism, and the severing of all STEM funding.
But I have my limits. STEM and R&D are in trouble, and our old models are failing. It is very clear to me. I have many, many examples that I have accumulated over the years.
I just slogged my way through Lindsay's recent lecture on Fascism. There was some good material in there, but he also took the opportunity to take lots of potshots at his fellow anti-woke travelers. I thought that was a bit gratuitous.
We cannot be doing a lot of infighting over trivial stuff if we are to make any progress against this woke Leftist behemoth. They are far too big and powerful and have control of almost all aspects of society and the culture and politics. It has even filtered into the legal and medical systems, very rapidly.
I cringe as I watch what looks like a "kangaroo" show trial and imminent punishment that Jordan Peterson is entangled in. It borders on the absurd, but somehow the woke do not seem to even notice this. They are not even the least bit ashamed of it. It is all for the greater glory of this anti-truth cult, it would seem, like Galileo's trial and house arrest.
I have no insight about how to make progress in the humanities. They are a bit far afield for me. But Peter Boghossian and Jordan Peterson and Jonathon Haidt and Christopher Rufo and Heather Mac Donald and others are attempting to address the problems in the Humanities. I am just observing their efforts, so far.
The only one I am in occasional communication with is Rufo, although I do correspond with two of Boghossian's advisors. Mostly I stick to contact with STEM types.
It is not that I think the Humanities are without worth. They are just outside my domain and expertise. I have only a rudimentary background in the humanities, since I have focused mostly on STEM for many, many, many years. If you want to make serious progress on very difficult problems, you cannot just take half-measures.
One thing I appreciate about both Peterson and Boghossian is that they can explain some of the complicated philosophical concepts, that are often presented in unnecessarily egregiously obscure fashion, in a way that I can appreciate. Before this, the most accessible philosophers I have found were Voltaire and Karl Popper. But I am mostly an amateur consumer of this material; the professional philosophers I encountered in person really did not impress me at all.
I did have a brilliant young Humanities professor who was working with me for a few months or longer. But then he bombarded me with hundreds or even a couple of thousand pages of typed material attempting to "prove" that all women have a penis. I just could not be bothered to read it or pick through it. I realize that he is probably surrounded by ideologues in his field where this stuff is de rigueur, and cannot be questioned or challenged, but I did not want to pollute my mind with this hogwash. The fact that someone so smart is so irrational under the spell of this woke cult is a bad, bad sign, I think. Anyway, he quit in disgust.
Lindsay's tendency to play "both-sidesism" is his greatest weakness. It leads him to start fights with sympathetic allies. As you say, now is not the time. The left is untroubled by their hypocrisy and obvious viciousness - the Peterson show trial is certainly a case in point.
One of the reasons I think the humanities need to be reclaimed, within the sciences, is that we are deep into a crisis of meaning. Ask most scientists *why* they're doing their research, and you'll generally be met with a blank stare and an uncomfortable silence. We've prioritized the left hemisphere too much, and everything has become fragmented, mechanical, and meaningless as a result (watch a couple of lectures by Iain McGilchrist if this strikes you as an odd statement ... It is not an exaggeration to say that his insights into hemispheric cognition are absolutely essential to understanding the problem, and the solution we face). Since by and large scientists cannot find meaning in what they're doing, and cannot connect their activities to a larger purpose (the same thing, really) they are easy prey for an ideology that offers meaning in the form of the struggle for social justice. Which, of course, intends to dissolve the scientific enterprise entirely and replace it with a new Dark Age ... but being naifs in the humanities, most scientists do not realize this....
If we consider the great men who laid the foundations for science, in every case we see polymaths who were well versed in philosophy and the classics. This is not accidental. It is that type that we need to cultivate again.
"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?
Of course, I am taking some pains to avoid identifying myself, since a lot of my opinions are obviously somewhat inflammatory. Even after they are filtered through Dorian, they still might come across as unnecessarily harsh, I guess. I would apologize for that, but perhaps some bluntness is called for given the dire straits that STEM currently finds itself in. Behind closed doors, I hear far worse from my collaborators. I am sure many of you do as well.
Let me say that I have a fairly broad background in STEM. However, during my career I have mainly focused on a few branches of physics, particularly the quantitative areas.
I also have an inordinate interest in applications. Many would say this already casts me in a terrible light. In conversations with fellow academics about this, I have noticed that some start to hyperventilate and seem to be at risk of passing out because of the stress, even though they are "nominally" doing applied work as well (presumably because funding is more readily available if you call yourself applied).
I have created numerous pieces of technology which are in widespread use. Many tens of billions of dollars were spent on their implementation. Almost every single American uses one or more of them every day of their lives.
So I know a tiny bit about STEM and what it is good for. And over my career, I have observed STEM veering into the ditch, so I am attempting to do something about that. I irritate the hell out of my close colleagues with my opinions. Now I am offering the wider STEM community the same opportunity.
That is a good question. A funny hat? A lapel pin?
I am not sure. If after you read the next few essays, you still want to be in contact, maybe we can arrange something.
My colleagues who are reading this thread would probably find this notion hilarious. They get plenty of exposure to me, but I am not sure how much they appreciate 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.
Yes. But I would like to think that everyone, even someone going to be a barista or a janitor, can know a little bit about STEM and what it is good for. My impression is that we do a terrible job of this. Even the popularizers are not great at communicating what STEM is and what use it is.
So we need not only to create systems where the heavy lifters in STEM can perform their "magic", but we also need to make at least the bare bones basics accessible to everyone. And things like Common Core, or the New Math, or other programs, really have failed at this.
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.
Skrentny put himself out there by publishing an article advocating the defunding of all of STEM in the LA Times. What did this character expect? Good heavens. Come on, let's be serious about this. It was such a stupid letter to the editor that Skrentny published that I am surprised it was even printed. Most would have just ignored it as meaningless blather, which is maybe what I should have done. Skrentny is a disgrace to UCSD, if anyone is even vaguely familiar with the founding principles of that institution. Is someone like this even qualified to be a "scholar"? What level of insight does this person exhibit? Unfortunately, our current academic standards are so pathetic that this is not that surprising.
I considered attacking Skrentny personally and professionally, but decided against it. He is just a sociologist, after all.
I also had material in the original essay making a series of suggestions for how Skrentny could make himself useful. Apparently the "powers that be" considered sociology so nonsensical that there was no place for it in this Heterodox STEM series of essays, so this was removed.
The fact that you could not even figure out the obvious joke in my pseudo-identity speaks volumes about you. You have revealed yourself. And what you have shown is not particularly attractive. I am NOT impressed. What I feel is closer to derision.
Skrentny does inadvertently make a good point, as I indicated in my essay. STEM could be far more productive and efficient than it currently is. And it should be.
Come on now, anonymous, you are NOT attacking him personally and professionally? I am a well published scientist and you can assess that. All I have is your claims about your scientific prowess, that I understandably refuse to accept, as much as you want to blather on. I do know that denigrating the entire field of sociology, philosophy of science, etc. tells me quite a bit about your scholarly knowledge and understanding. Given that, I am a great promoter of STEM, but also know the benefits of the liberal arts and having knowledge about them. I am also concerned about standards and ethics in teaching, publishing, and the replication crisis in many scientific fields. I have been somewhat of a heretic myself in attacking received wisdom in my research areas.
Did I publish an article in a national newspaper advocating for the extinction of your own personal field? Did I write a book about it? Did I write anything about getting rid of sociology and sociologists?
When I do, then you might have a reason to complain. Until then, pound sand.
If I was you, I would have considered using a pseudonym for any comments on Substack rather than revealing my identity as you have done. Wow, you sure have an inflated opinion of yourself, for no evident reason.
Having looked at Skrentny's interview on the University of Chicago blog, I will agree that he comes across as slightly more sensible in the interview, and presumably in his book than he does in his letter to the editor of the LA Times. Skrentny works on a campus with many many STEM professionals.
He never thought to consult with any of them or have them review his work before publishing? He just wanted to create a polemic and a sort of temper tantrum, a diatribe? Really? What value is that?
I guess it has some use in that it garners attention. But I think he could have done a lot better.
STEM education and STEM R and D IS in trouble. But not for the reasons Skrentny states. It is very clear to those of us in STEM. Why not ask us?
Skrentny claims that most of the people trained in STEM do not work in STEM because STEM is such an awful horrible field, destroying the earth and with lousy amounts of "equity" (that is, there is not an evident majority of women or other privileged "minorities" in STEM, so it must be a "bad" place full of "bad" people; bigots and racists and horrible white supremacists and those awful "white adjacents" like Asians and even worst of all, Jews).
Sorry, but this is just politically correct woke nonsense. Where is the evidence of this assertion? Sure, it sounds good in the faculty lounges in the humanities. But it strikes me as unfounded nonsense, and probably false.
I have personally suffered from discrimination in STEM because of my ethnicity, and my minority status. However, that does not mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or cut off our nose to spite our face.
If we focus on high standards and merit and competence, instead of woke machinations, a lot of the supposed problems will evaporate.
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.
You are the sad one. And you are not in power. So too bad; what a shame.
I notice essays from people in your field on this blogsite that are beyond the pale. Atrocious.
Start your own version of Heterodox STEM. Then you can censor to your heart's content and push nonsensical woke values, advocating for the destruction of STEM, the destruction of the United States and the obliteration of all of Western Civilization. Go ahead...enjoy yourself. No one is stopping you.
I will quote one of the luminaries of my field:
"Intelligent People Ignore." -- Albert Einstein
And clearly, that is what people should do to a Luddite such as yourself.
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.
Of course this is a pseudonym (duh). Was there any doubt? Of course there is no such person as "Alan Beado". Do you not understand why that name is an intentional joke? If not, you better brush up on your STEM background.
I have had an impact in STEM. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I have had a substantial impact. And if things work out, I might even have a larger impact yet before I am done. But given the delicate politics involved in criticizing the way we have organized ourselves in STEM, I thought it was better to maintain a low profile.
I have friends and colleagues who have spoken out previously. And they were intensely flamed and threatened for their efforts. It is very dangerous to push back against the current trends. Even the richest man on earth, Elon Musk, gets more than his share of brickbats and hatred for pointing out the obvious problems with woke ideology and our management of STEM and R&D. There are plenty of people who are desperately attempting to put Musk in prison and strip him of all his wealth. Have you not noticed this? Really?
So, for now, I will be Alan Beado. Thanks all the same.
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, ...
But ornithology can help non-birds understand birds better. We recently had two spacecraft topple over on touchdown on the lunar surface, with shouts of "success" from the space agencies (JAXA and NASA) ringing a bit hollow. But public support for these endeavors is helped by their understanding that failure _is_ often an option, and STEM embraces an iterative process. I am confident that subsequent Moon missions will end up right-side-up from now on, which is good news for astronauts. If these two(!) missions had landed uneventfully by happenstance, a bigger failure may have been waiting for us in the future. That is the take-away that the public should understand, and that space agency new conferences should communicate.
I don't think the public thinks that STEM is perfect, especially after the public health authorities covered themselves in rot (don't wear masks - you must wear masks - wear two masks; banning travel to China is racist - travel to China is banned; ...) during the covid pandemic.
Failure is an undesirable option, even though all know that it does and will occur. Avoiding failure is a much better option, when possible.
Ornithologists can help, if that's their real purpose; as opposed to being arrogant commissars.
"Public health officials" are not STEM practitioners, the same way that flying squirrels are not birds. Some of the contradictory messaging came from the iterative process of science, but got mangled by the "arrogant commissars". Science, when unfettered, can change its ideas in the light of new information, and that should be understood by the US public as a strength, not a weakness.
And the best way to avoid failure is not to try, or try once and then give up when it doesn't work! I know way too Gen Z'ers who live that way...
(I'm feeling a bit snarly today; I'm sure we agree on most points, including the main one that STEM does have value!)
STEM really includes biology, biochem, pharma and medicine. And the national public health authorities are supposed to be the most eminent of doctors. So yes, they are STEM practitioners. The problem is that they allowed themselves to be corrupted by politicians.
Science is like a fuzzy sphere with hairs on it. The outer layer - leading-edge research - is softish and changing; the inner layer - proven laws - is hard and rarely changes.
Failure happens, especially at the leading edge. Accepting that and persisting is great. But celebrating failure is not. Aim for success, and persist.
Public health officials may be midwit bureaucrats wrapping themselves in the mantle of Science, but actual scientists in my experience were only too happy to go along with it all. Enthusiastic even.
Same with the DIE stuff, climate change, etc. etc.
There was money to be made; funding to be had. And it was just easier to go along to get along.
I think that DEI should be called IED, because of its destructive force.
I like Chris Rufo's proposal to replace it with EMC; equality of opportunity, merit and colorblindness.
Heh. I've used the IEDology joke myself, before.
I don't like Rufo's suggestion, mainly because I've become violently allergic to 'equality'. Instead, I propose Merit, Opportunity, and Glory, with which the Marxcissist hordes can be MOGged.
Yes, not all students belong in STEM. And as I will point out in a later essay, people who are not doing the "heavy lifting" in STEM still can have "a place" in STEM, but in assorted support positions. For example, there is a need for R&D accounting and customer relations and proposal support and research assistants and production coders and security staff and all kinds of other stuff. There literally is a place in R&D (depending on the size of the R&D enterprise), for almost everyone. But as you point out, not everyone is suited to being an R&D "worker bee", however.
An essay to follow will address this question of a "liberal arts education". That essay is not that long; perhaps I should have included more detail. We will see how it is received.
However, before my essay on the liberal arts comes out in a week or so, consider the following. Countries outside the US for the most part disdain the "liberal arts education" paradigm. In those places, if you want to study History, you study History. If you want to study German, you study German. If you want to study Mechanical Engineering, you study Mechanical Engineering. Of course, there is a selection of ancillary topics from other fields that are necessary in each of these cases.
However, the American approach of a smorgasboard of random disconnected topics with no depth taken over 3 or 4 years is ridiculous and pointless. The only exceptions might be the "legacies" with trust funds. And they do not really "need" a college education at all. It is just a way for them to get some minimal amount of polish so they are less embarrassing to their elders before setting out into the world.
Look forward to your further work.
I might mention that one of our worst mistakes, in the last few decades, was to let these "support staff" and "administrative staff" take complete control of STEM. They do all the hiring. They do all the firing. They decide on the metrics that are used for evaluation. They impose all the rules like DEI and other dopey distractions. They demand everyone spend endless hours on committee work (one job offer I received for a faculty position mandated an inescapable 80-120 hours per week of committee work, before the person was even permitted to do any "real" work; every single person in the department was subject to this requirement and the chairman was quite proud of it). They decide what and who to fund. They decide what people should work on (or must work on) and what methods they should or can or even will use. They even try to dictate what results will be obtained from a given study and when the breakthroughs should or even must occur.
It all has to be precisely planned, like making widgets on an assembly line.
It all sounds great, sort of, except that there will be nothing productive or very little useful that comes out of such a system.
These administrative people and assorted support people are paid 2 or 3 or 4 or more times as much as the technical people. And they never raise any money or do any teaching or publish anything or do any research. They often have zero technical background, or they were so incompetent at technical work that they willingly migrated into these positions of power. They also cannot be fired. And they make the rules, which do not apply to them personally.
Their opinions are often just nonsense. One I worked for thought that no "real scientist" should ever use an equation, and as a result, he punished me for doing so. Another thought his deputy's wife's business in breeding and raising dogs was a conflict of interest for her husband's STEM job, so he ordered the husband to shut down the business and kill all the dogs. One sang me the "Mickey Mouse Club" song for learning about and using statistics (I have heard this from many technical people; there is a tremendous allergy among some administrators to statistics, apparently). One wanted to dictate what the content of my lectures would be in my field of expertise, even though they had zero background and were full of nonsense. One told me that in his division, they would not permit any of that "PhD bullshit...get that through your goddamned fucking stupid brain". He also told me that he did not care if the multibillion dollar project (promising extreme results to the customer) worked, he just wanted to "make money". One was super excited about the term "big data" that he had read about in the popular press and wanted me, in a sentence or two, to tell all his teaching staff how to open this "magic door" to huge money and jobs for the students (without understanding anything or doing any work or preparation).
How did we get in the place where these people have been given infinite power and cannot be contradicted or chastised?
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.
There is unfortunately a LOT of truth to this comment. STEM R&D is in a lot of trouble in the West. We better think about how to get our house in order.
I will address this topic in a series of essays that hopefully will follow.
First, it needs to move, as much as possible, out of the academy. A pivot to crowdsourced or private patron funding, as opposed to government grants, is essential - it will help to refocus science on what is interesting and useful, and to enable a greater diversity of topics to be researched by teams with greater independence, operating more like eg lawyers or dentists with private practices.
The peer review system is outdated and irrelevant. It needs to be abandoned. Professional status should be assigned by actual contributions, not number of papers etc. Focus should be on quality, not quantity, of publication. Just let scientists use blogs, remove status from quantity of written material, and assign it to achievements that actually matter.
Quite frankly, a cultural counteroffensive against the humanities is absolutely necessary. They need to recaptured and rendered sane again. Doing this will require technically trained individuals - who by and large are in fact our best and brightest - to educate themselves in the humanities, providing themselves the classical education they should have received in the first place, and learning the arts of rhetoric, communication, composition, and so on. This is already happening I think - much of the dissident right is composed of polymaths with STEM backgrounds who have turned their talents to cultural warfare. In the long run this is the most essential element of this struggle for civilization. As it is, the left has had unfettered access to the imaginations of the people, and it has poisoned them deeply.
Yes, you are right on the money. This is a brilliant comment. You easily could have been reading my next few essays.
If one follows James Lindsay, who has a PhD in mathematics, but has been educating himself in philosophy and history to counter-attack the woke on their own turf, one can see at least one example of what you are suggesting.
Also if one looks at the Weizmann Institute in Israel or IST in Austria, you see where the proper organization of STEM can lead to completely self-funded institutions. One can shed all the foolish administrators (both Stanford and Yale now have more administrators than students, apparently) and the assorted intellectual clowns one finds heavily represented in fields outside of STEM (the original goal of UCSD, by the way, if you look at its foundational principles, was to avoid this) and allow STEM people to do their work unfettered by deadweight.
I have been asked about 15 times by the Governor's Office in my state to sit on a committee overseeing all higher education in my state (for no pay, of course). I took one look at who else was on the committee and I knew immediately that I would be wasting my time. I would be forced to sit there, mute, for hours on end every month, while people who openly hate my guts spew nonsense and make threats and be generally obnoxious and rude. If I dared to speak up (or even possibly if I remained silent), they would have wanted to tar and feather me. And that would have been the outcome if I was lucky.
I've been thinking about these matters for a while, and writing on it now and then in my own colorful fashion. Also ranting about this to my colleagues, though in general they are all heavily institutionalized - low openness, high agreeability, high neuroticism is the typical personality profile in STEM right now, sadly. They're all too timid to reform things.
Lindsay is certainly an example of what I'm talking about, albeit a bit milquetoast when it comes to prescription (also he blocked me on Twitter lol ... he doesn't take criticism from his right flank well).
The admin situation is cancer. Almost literally. A metastasized tumour that needs to be excised and burned.
Self-governing STEM research institutes is definitely a model worth building on. We need something similar in the humanities, but with a return to ruthless meritocracy at the admissions level - no more taking every warm body, using the humanities departments as dumping grounds for the low-talent dross dragged in by student loans programs. Train up a generation of intellectual knights templar to fight the culture war with every philosophical and literary tool at their disposal.
There are plenty of my colleagues who would agree with your "cancer" comment. They just are too cautious to say it in public. What they say in private would shock most people. But they have suffered mightily at the hands of these incompetent know-nothing bureaucrats. So I guess it is to be expected.
This is the problem - the unwillingness to say anything publicly.
In my opinion you are striking the correct chord. I can tell you have been thinking about this, as I have for the last several years.
I am even working on an institution/enterprise to do exactly this right now. I have been creating some of the important components and elements over the last decade or more. I have written a LOT of material about this. And I have made some progress on important projects. We need resources and leverage that comes with resources. And so, I might be able to provide some of that. We will see.
My colleagues feel pretty much the same way yours do. They tolerate my ranting, at least somewhat anyway, since I am a bit of a "heavyweight" in our discipline. I am sort of the rainmaker, or potential economic engine. So they bite their tongues and try to steer me in less confrontational directions. They probably view me as inappropriately obstinate and fixated on irrelevant stuff.
They are probably correct. I have to be a bit more reasonable. One chastised me for responding to the malcontent from Tennessee who was defending the anti-STEM sociologist who thinks the answer to the problems in STEM is just more wokism, and the severing of all STEM funding.
But I have my limits. STEM and R&D are in trouble, and our old models are failing. It is very clear to me. I have many, many examples that I have accumulated over the years.
I just slogged my way through Lindsay's recent lecture on Fascism. There was some good material in there, but he also took the opportunity to take lots of potshots at his fellow anti-woke travelers. I thought that was a bit gratuitous.
We cannot be doing a lot of infighting over trivial stuff if we are to make any progress against this woke Leftist behemoth. They are far too big and powerful and have control of almost all aspects of society and the culture and politics. It has even filtered into the legal and medical systems, very rapidly.
I cringe as I watch what looks like a "kangaroo" show trial and imminent punishment that Jordan Peterson is entangled in. It borders on the absurd, but somehow the woke do not seem to even notice this. They are not even the least bit ashamed of it. It is all for the greater glory of this anti-truth cult, it would seem, like Galileo's trial and house arrest.
I have no insight about how to make progress in the humanities. They are a bit far afield for me. But Peter Boghossian and Jordan Peterson and Jonathon Haidt and Christopher Rufo and Heather Mac Donald and others are attempting to address the problems in the Humanities. I am just observing their efforts, so far.
The only one I am in occasional communication with is Rufo, although I do correspond with two of Boghossian's advisors. Mostly I stick to contact with STEM types.
It is not that I think the Humanities are without worth. They are just outside my domain and expertise. I have only a rudimentary background in the humanities, since I have focused mostly on STEM for many, many, many years. If you want to make serious progress on very difficult problems, you cannot just take half-measures.
One thing I appreciate about both Peterson and Boghossian is that they can explain some of the complicated philosophical concepts, that are often presented in unnecessarily egregiously obscure fashion, in a way that I can appreciate. Before this, the most accessible philosophers I have found were Voltaire and Karl Popper. But I am mostly an amateur consumer of this material; the professional philosophers I encountered in person really did not impress me at all.
I did have a brilliant young Humanities professor who was working with me for a few months or longer. But then he bombarded me with hundreds or even a couple of thousand pages of typed material attempting to "prove" that all women have a penis. I just could not be bothered to read it or pick through it. I realize that he is probably surrounded by ideologues in his field where this stuff is de rigueur, and cannot be questioned or challenged, but I did not want to pollute my mind with this hogwash. The fact that someone so smart is so irrational under the spell of this woke cult is a bad, bad sign, I think. Anyway, he quit in disgust.
Lindsay's tendency to play "both-sidesism" is his greatest weakness. It leads him to start fights with sympathetic allies. As you say, now is not the time. The left is untroubled by their hypocrisy and obvious viciousness - the Peterson show trial is certainly a case in point.
One of the reasons I think the humanities need to be reclaimed, within the sciences, is that we are deep into a crisis of meaning. Ask most scientists *why* they're doing their research, and you'll generally be met with a blank stare and an uncomfortable silence. We've prioritized the left hemisphere too much, and everything has become fragmented, mechanical, and meaningless as a result (watch a couple of lectures by Iain McGilchrist if this strikes you as an odd statement ... It is not an exaggeration to say that his insights into hemispheric cognition are absolutely essential to understanding the problem, and the solution we face). Since by and large scientists cannot find meaning in what they're doing, and cannot connect their activities to a larger purpose (the same thing, really) they are easy prey for an ideology that offers meaning in the form of the struggle for social justice. Which, of course, intends to dissolve the scientific enterprise entirely and replace it with a new Dark Age ... but being naifs in the humanities, most scientists do not realize this....
If we consider the great men who laid the foundations for science, in every case we see polymaths who were well versed in philosophy and the classics. This is not accidental. It is that type that we need to cultivate again.
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)
typo alert: I meant to type 1-650-518-6636.
"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?
Of course, I am taking some pains to avoid identifying myself, since a lot of my opinions are obviously somewhat inflammatory. Even after they are filtered through Dorian, they still might come across as unnecessarily harsh, I guess. I would apologize for that, but perhaps some bluntness is called for given the dire straits that STEM currently finds itself in. Behind closed doors, I hear far worse from my collaborators. I am sure many of you do as well.
Let me say that I have a fairly broad background in STEM. However, during my career I have mainly focused on a few branches of physics, particularly the quantitative areas.
I also have an inordinate interest in applications. Many would say this already casts me in a terrible light. In conversations with fellow academics about this, I have noticed that some start to hyperventilate and seem to be at risk of passing out because of the stress, even though they are "nominally" doing applied work as well (presumably because funding is more readily available if you call yourself applied).
I have created numerous pieces of technology which are in widespread use. Many tens of billions of dollars were spent on their implementation. Almost every single American uses one or more of them every day of their lives.
So I know a tiny bit about STEM and what it is good for. And over my career, I have observed STEM veering into the ditch, so I am attempting to do something about that. I irritate the hell out of my close colleagues with my opinions. Now I am offering the wider STEM community the same opportunity.
How do I give you the recognition signal at an APS meeting? ;-)
That is a good question. A funny hat? A lapel pin?
I am not sure. If after you read the next few essays, you still want to be in contact, maybe we can arrange something.
My colleagues who are reading this thread would probably find this notion hilarious. They get plenty of exposure to me, but I am not sure how much they appreciate it.
Obviously, I can be a "bit much", let's say.
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.
Yes. But I would like to think that everyone, even someone going to be a barista or a janitor, can know a little bit about STEM and what it is good for. My impression is that we do a terrible job of this. Even the popularizers are not great at communicating what STEM is and what use it is.
So we need not only to create systems where the heavy lifters in STEM can perform their "magic", but we also need to make at least the bare bones basics accessible to everyone. And things like Common Core, or the New Math, or other programs, really have failed at this.
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.
Skrentny put himself out there by publishing an article advocating the defunding of all of STEM in the LA Times. What did this character expect? Good heavens. Come on, let's be serious about this. It was such a stupid letter to the editor that Skrentny published that I am surprised it was even printed. Most would have just ignored it as meaningless blather, which is maybe what I should have done. Skrentny is a disgrace to UCSD, if anyone is even vaguely familiar with the founding principles of that institution. Is someone like this even qualified to be a "scholar"? What level of insight does this person exhibit? Unfortunately, our current academic standards are so pathetic that this is not that surprising.
I considered attacking Skrentny personally and professionally, but decided against it. He is just a sociologist, after all.
I also had material in the original essay making a series of suggestions for how Skrentny could make himself useful. Apparently the "powers that be" considered sociology so nonsensical that there was no place for it in this Heterodox STEM series of essays, so this was removed.
The fact that you could not even figure out the obvious joke in my pseudo-identity speaks volumes about you. You have revealed yourself. And what you have shown is not particularly attractive. I am NOT impressed. What I feel is closer to derision.
Skrentny does inadvertently make a good point, as I indicated in my essay. STEM could be far more productive and efficient than it currently is. And it should be.
Come on now, anonymous, you are NOT attacking him personally and professionally? I am a well published scientist and you can assess that. All I have is your claims about your scientific prowess, that I understandably refuse to accept, as much as you want to blather on. I do know that denigrating the entire field of sociology, philosophy of science, etc. tells me quite a bit about your scholarly knowledge and understanding. Given that, I am a great promoter of STEM, but also know the benefits of the liberal arts and having knowledge about them. I am also concerned about standards and ethics in teaching, publishing, and the replication crisis in many scientific fields. I have been somewhat of a heretic myself in attacking received wisdom in my research areas.
Did I publish an article in a national newspaper advocating for the extinction of your own personal field? Did I write a book about it? Did I write anything about getting rid of sociology and sociologists?
When I do, then you might have a reason to complain. Until then, pound sand.
If I was you, I would have considered using a pseudonym for any comments on Substack rather than revealing my identity as you have done. Wow, you sure have an inflated opinion of yourself, for no evident reason.
I looked you up. I am NOT impressed.
Believe me, if I was motivated enough, I could have launched a massive attack on Skrentny. He is just not worth my time. And neither are you.
Having looked at Skrentny's interview on the University of Chicago blog, I will agree that he comes across as slightly more sensible in the interview, and presumably in his book than he does in his letter to the editor of the LA Times. Skrentny works on a campus with many many STEM professionals.
He never thought to consult with any of them or have them review his work before publishing? He just wanted to create a polemic and a sort of temper tantrum, a diatribe? Really? What value is that?
I guess it has some use in that it garners attention. But I think he could have done a lot better.
STEM education and STEM R and D IS in trouble. But not for the reasons Skrentny states. It is very clear to those of us in STEM. Why not ask us?
I do have one comment on the Skrentny interview in the University of Chicago blog:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo206855230.html
Skrentny claims that most of the people trained in STEM do not work in STEM because STEM is such an awful horrible field, destroying the earth and with lousy amounts of "equity" (that is, there is not an evident majority of women or other privileged "minorities" in STEM, so it must be a "bad" place full of "bad" people; bigots and racists and horrible white supremacists and those awful "white adjacents" like Asians and even worst of all, Jews).
Sorry, but this is just politically correct woke nonsense. Where is the evidence of this assertion? Sure, it sounds good in the faculty lounges in the humanities. But it strikes me as unfounded nonsense, and probably false.
I have personally suffered from discrimination in STEM because of my ethnicity, and my minority status. However, that does not mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or cut off our nose to spite our face.
If we focus on high standards and merit and competence, instead of woke machinations, a lot of the supposed problems will evaporate.
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.
You are the sad one. And you are not in power. So too bad; what a shame.
I notice essays from people in your field on this blogsite that are beyond the pale. Atrocious.
Start your own version of Heterodox STEM. Then you can censor to your heart's content and push nonsensical woke values, advocating for the destruction of STEM, the destruction of the United States and the obliteration of all of Western Civilization. Go ahead...enjoy yourself. No one is stopping you.
I will quote one of the luminaries of my field:
"Intelligent People Ignore." -- Albert Einstein
And clearly, that is what people should do to a Luddite such as yourself.
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.
Of course this is a pseudonym (duh). Was there any doubt? Of course there is no such person as "Alan Beado". Do you not understand why that name is an intentional joke? If not, you better brush up on your STEM background.
I have had an impact in STEM. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I have had a substantial impact. And if things work out, I might even have a larger impact yet before I am done. But given the delicate politics involved in criticizing the way we have organized ourselves in STEM, I thought it was better to maintain a low profile.
I have friends and colleagues who have spoken out previously. And they were intensely flamed and threatened for their efforts. It is very dangerous to push back against the current trends. Even the richest man on earth, Elon Musk, gets more than his share of brickbats and hatred for pointing out the obvious problems with woke ideology and our management of STEM and R&D. There are plenty of people who are desperately attempting to put Musk in prison and strip him of all his wealth. Have you not noticed this? Really?
So, for now, I will be Alan Beado. Thanks all the same.