Ignorant Scientists

This reminds me of a few intellectuals I know.

http://theweek.com/articles/610948/why-many-scientists-are-ignorant

This thread will be flooded by insults and racism

Lol

See. I called him before he could spread insults and racism

I agree with the part about specialists in certain fields being touted as a valid opinion in matters not within their field.

Loads of conspiracy nuts touted professor this and Dr that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as "experts" because they had a title. It was only when you looked into them that you found out they had phds in theology and other unrelated subjects and were in no better position to speak out on aeronautical engineering or load capacities of steel or the laws of thermodynamics than anyone unqualified in those fields.

Not that I think that should prevent people speaking out on topics they're not experts in. They should just make it clear it's not their area of expertise

Which brings us to the author of the article. He's neither a scientist or a philosopher. He makes some stunningly idiotic assumptions about scientists like the following

_After all, as a group, scientists have an obvious objective interest in experimental science being recognized as the only path to valuable knowledge, and therefore an interest in disdaining other paths to knowledge as less valid. People who listen to scientists opine about philosophy ought to keep that in mind

It's rare to read such nonsense. It really is.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Lol

Nice duckout

Philosophy is to science what masturbation is to sex.

Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
Nice duckout

I think this is on the whole a pretty good article. Perhaps the author generalizes a bit too much about scientists, but I agree that particularly those in the natural sciences can be prone to assume that a) their field is superior and b) that gives them better insight into basically all other fields, more so than those that dedicate considerably more time to it.

That's not to say that cross-disciplinary science can't be a great thing, but a certain arrogant approach does make people who excel in their discipline at times ignorant of what they don't know about other fields.

My question is why they are asking scientists about philosophy and then being surprised when they don't have any clue about a subject they didn't study?

It's not like Bill Nye went out of his way to discuss philosophy and got it all wrong.

Plus Nye is awesome because he utterly destroyed the concept of astrology in like 60 seconds.

I like Nye as well. I agree that his example probably isn't a good one of the phenomenon in this case.

Originally posted by Bardock42
I think this is on the whole a pretty good article. Perhaps the author generalizes a bit too much about scientists, but I agree that particularly those in the natural sciences can be prone to assume that a) their field is superior and b) that gives them better insight into basically all other fields, more so than those that dedicate considerably more time to it.

That's not to say that cross-disciplinary science can't be a great thing, but a certain arrogant approach does make people who excel in their discipline at times ignorant of what they don't know about other fields.

Pretty much.

This happens a lot tbh.

For example, Richard Dawkins is a biologist but he is hailed as some kind of expert in philosophy/ theology cause he likes to talk about it....

The thing is, his opinion on that issue is as valid as any random biology professor's views.

Originally posted by Surtur
My question is why they are asking scientists about philosophy and then being surprised when they don't have any clue about a subject they didn't study?

It's not like Bill Nye went out of his way to discuss philosophy and got it all wrong.

Plus Nye is awesome because he utterly destroyed the concept of astrology in like 60 seconds.

I think this article is on point with many of its claims.

Plus, astrology destroys itself ;-)