Is the Academy an Honest Place?

Repeatedly we are reminded of unreliable research in economics, social sciences, even some of the hard sciences.
Political agendas and intellectual passion can result in cargo cult science.

Some say that the lack of integrity in the academy reflects a general problem. Really?
Tell me this, if that would be so, how would we explain the dominance of leftist politics in Universities?
Is it possible that scientific pretense and the ruling class elite (read the excellent writing of Angelo Codevilla) makes academic inquiry even more corrupted by political agendas and the leftist problem of “lying for justice?”
http://townhall.com/columnists/kevinglass/2014/01/25/a-finger-on-the-scales-n1784470

5 thoughts on “Is the Academy an Honest Place?”

  1. easy enough.
    attached, and thanks for your interest and comments.
    John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)

  2. That’s quite right, the unconstrained vision. Sowell is excellent.
    I don’t know Codevilla, will look him up.

  3. Actually it is something well considered and discussed by angelo codevilla in his essay on scientific pretense and the longer and more famous essay on the ruling class.
    Thomas Sowell in his books on intellectuals and the vision of the anointed nails it well.

  4. As Ronald Reagan said, ‘the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant. It’s that they know so much that is not true.’
    It’s hard to pin down why academics get things wrong so much. Check out the two envelopes ‘paradox’ for mathematicians failing to grasp something that ordinary people get right almost instantly. True, expressing that instinctive understanding as a solid proof is another matter, but I still consider the matter ridiculous.
    Why this lack of simple judgment leads inexorably leftward might take a magnum opus to examine. But it seems to be bound up with what Reagan said. Lefties and academics think they know how to set the world to rights. Ordinary people are more modest, and know they do not.

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