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July 6, 2006 I'm one of those profs myself (at least I'm a semi-retired, "emeritus" prof), so why should I be warning you? Well, I don't mean that the opinions of all professors are suspicious in some way (and, hey, certainly not my own). It's just that even though we have to know a lot, and we had to make important judgments about some of you (in the form of grades and recommendations), I'm saying that we do tend to have biases and prejudices. This is especially true of opinions that involve "leftist" or "rightist" political slants. But that can include a lot of things nowadays, even scientific "facts," and historical "facts," and even things that overlap with religious beliefs. And science, history, and religion cover quite a bit of territory, so if political slants might color things, watch out! Of course, I've only known a small percentage of professors, but it has been a pretty large number overall, because of the nature of my activities. I can't really prove that any of those profs are "biased," so all I'm going to do is tell you my observations, and that is the limit of my little warning. It has been my observation that the more theoretical and less practical a professor's field is, the more to the left is the bias, both for their professional work and their personal, extracurricular views. For example, pure math people and theoretical physicists tend to be "liberals," while applied math and applied physics people tend to be less liberal or even slightly "conservative." (Once again, this is just my long term personal observation, but I'm not claiming to have run a sociological survey.) Engineering profs can be liberal, but I've known many who are quite conservative, sometimes very much so. Economics profs are often somewhat liberal, while business profs are often somewhat conservative, sometimes even extremely conservative. Does this have any bearing on finding the "truth?" I can't prove this, but it seems logical that it might. Professors have to be more intelligent than the average person, or they couldn't get their jobs in the first place. However, one must realize that even the smartest person can believe untrue things because of psychological "problems," and plenty of people have a small dose of that. The tough part is identifying what is a "problem," if it is just a slight case. There is another distinguishing characteristic of most professors: they work harder and concentrate more on their professional work than most people do. A large percentage of Ph.D.s would love to be professors, but there are only a relatively few prof jobs, so the competition is fierce, requiring extremely hard work in addition to brains. Therefore many profs have only limited experience in ordinary life. You would expect that this could cloud their judgment and balance in some ways, and I believe it often does. (Naturally, one could say that about me, but I didn't work my way up the ranks to tenure --- I entered academia at the tenured level --- however that's a long story, and it wouldn't prove anything. I could be just as crazy as anybody else, for all you know.) You readers might not have observed the personal lives of many theoreticians, but I have, in quite a few cases. Outside of their main fields, the behaviors of theoretical scientists and economists have looked more irrational than usual, at least to me. It seems like such behavior could bias their professional opinions, wherever there is a political weighting (as in the environment, economics, or similar fields, where it is difficult to be sure of anything). A tendency to imagine things fitting an oversimplified theoretical model, when they don't really fit, would be an irrational bias, if it were present in the thinking process of a professor. (I can't resist saying here, "Like socialism, as a model system.") Generally speaking, and you can verify for yourself, by reading what professors have published in popular news media, whether the more practical a prof's field is, the more conservative the views. Of course, the theoreticians claim they are smarter, but the practical folks claim to have broader experience in life. Couldn't a conservative bias occur, for the "practical" folks, who might be wealthy and therefore afraid of "leftist" views? Sure it could. So I would say "Beware of Professors' Opinions!" Read what they say, and think about it, but realize that it might (or might not) be irrationally biased, and therefore just as wrong as any other opinion might be. I think that the best test is when something has been tried on a large scale (like American style capitalism). However, if it can not be tested at all, then anybody's opinion is as good as anybody else's. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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