What does having a Ph.D. really mean?

[Wowbagger]

Now, don't get me wrong: I generally have a tremendous amount of respect for those who have earned a Ph.D. And, it is probably something I will never obtain, myself.
This question merely follows from a recent discussion I was having.

Basically, I was mentioning to some folks that there are lots of people don't need a Ph.D. to effectively communicate scientific expertise (James Randi, Douglas Adams, etc.), and some people with a Ph.D. are surprisingly incompetent when it comes to science outside of the rigid specifics under which they acquired the degree (Behe, Gary Schwartz, etc.).

So, I was then quizzed: All right, what exactly is the point of a Ph.D., then?!

Here is the provisional answer I came up with, that I would like some feedback on:
A Ph.D. generally means that, at least at one point in the person's life, they were able to demonstrate the minimum competency necessary to do original work in a given field.
You could expand on that by mentioning the "minimum competency" is really quite high by academic standards: You have publish results of an original study, and defend it against a panel of very scrutinizing experts, etc. And, thus those able to obtain one are, generally speaking, far from "minimal" people.

We could also get into what a Ph.D. does NOT mean: It does not mean you are suddenly an absolute expert on anything. It does not mean that your ideas are impervious to challenge, even from those who lack such honors. It does not automatically mean you are more fit to perform a particular job, Etc.

But, how am I doing so far?

The history of the degree is not my main concern, here. Although, I do find it mildly ironic that Ph.D. stands for "Doctor of Philosophy", which does not seem to be an accurate description of its usage, today, from what I can tell.

[drkitten]

Basically, I was mentioning to some folks that there are lots of people don't need a Ph.D. to effectively communicate scientific expertise (James Randi, Douglas Adams, etc.), and some people with a Ph.D. are surprisingly incompetent when it comes to science outside of the rigid specifics under which they acquired the degree (Behe, Gary Schwartz, etc.).

Of course. Similarly, there are some world-class guitar gods who have never taken a music lesson in their lives (did Cobain ever take music classes?). And I think that Cole Porter never learned how to read music.


Here is the provisional answer I came up with, that I would like some feedback on:
A Ph.D. generally means that, at least at one point in the person's life, they were able to demonstrate the minimum competency necessary to do original work in a given field.

That's not bad.

I prefer to think of it as an extension of the medieval guild system (which, in fact, it is). In order to become a journeyman carpenter, you were required to submit a "prentice piece" that demonstrated mastery of the craft of carpentry. The guild's "masters" would judge the quality of the work and decide whether you had learned enough to be trusted to work independently.

If you wished to become a "master" of the guild, you were similarly required to submit a "masterpiece" (hence the name), and the masters would judge whether or not you were qualified to that title yourself --- and therefore, to train apprentices yourself and to judge aspiring new journeymen and masters.

The Ph.D. is essentially the mark of admission into the guild of academics.

Now, just as carpenters are not expert masons, and masons are not expert jewelers, similarly being a "master" of the academic guild doesn't mean that you're an expert in everything. Just because you were an expert carpenter thirty years ago does not mean that you are up-to-date in your tools and technology. Just because you are a master carpenter doesn't mean that you never hit your thumb with a hammer or crack a piece of drywall. But it does mean that the other carpenters recognize your expertise.

In fact, just as a master finishing carpenter may not be an expert woodworker (and a master silversmith may not be a master at appraising rubies), so a Ph.D. in English doesn't equate to competence in Computer Science or Biology. And if all you need is a general "carpenter," they're probably better off either hiring you or asking for a recommendation than just pulling someone out of the Frog and Peach.

But that's the tack I would take. How do you know if a carpenter is any good?

[Fnord]

What does having a Ph.D. really mean?

It means people without PhD's have all the more reason to seek ways to discredit you and what you have to say.

[fishbob]

My thesis advisor told me this:

BS - bull $(^%
MS - more $%*)
PhD - piled higher and deeper.

What a funny guy.

He also told me that:
- a MS is your 'union card' in the technical community.
- a PhD documents your commitment to a particular field of study.

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

A PhD is valid only as a kind of measurement for specific groups of people. Out of the "academic", and maybe "enterprise" worlds it doesnt mean anything. A PhD is a label, and mankind love labels.

As you have pointed out, you don't need to have a PhD to be an expert in some field. Whats more, we all know that several of the most prominent people in the world have barely finished high school!

And yes, it works the other way, some PhDs are completely and utterly wrong in their beliefs about anything, even in their fields of expertise.

[Wowbagger]

Well, I guess that settles that. Thanks, everyone!

[technoextreme]

And yes, it works the other way, some PhDs are completely and utterly wrong in their beliefs about anything, even in their fields of expertise.
Im reminded of my Linear Systems professor and the story of after he got his PHD and started working at the college I currently attend. There was a research project for the government involving blocking out lasers that are used to blind a soilder's eyes. He was asked to work on this project. His immediate response was to tell the person that it violated the laws of physics namely the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between laser light and regular light.

[Plasmid]

It means that you can get a job. In my country companies in the field of biochemistry/molecular biology expect that level of eduction in an applicant :mad:

[joobz]

Im reminded of my Linear Systems professor and the story of after he got his PHD and started working at the college I currently attend. There was a research project for the government involving blocking out lasers that are used to blind a soilder's eyes. He was asked to work on this project. His immediate response was to tell the person that it violated the laws of physics namely the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between laser light and regular light.
perhaps I'm missing the point of your story, but why can't you build a galss that, at a certain level of intensity, starts to actively absorb the light?

[technoextreme]

perhaps I'm missing the point of your story, but why can't you build a galss that, at a certain level of intensity, starts to actively absorb the light?
Electromagnetic wave theory says that you can't do that. At least as far as I can tell/learned. The wave attenuation happens at all frequencies just in varying amounts. Even if you were to design a glass which attenuates a certain frequency it would be easy to hop over to another spectrum which is how those weapons actually work. Radar jamming/Radar works in the same mannor.

[TX50]

You can call yourself "Doctor" and dupe young ladies of the female
persuasion into allowing you to examine them (while neglecting to tell
them that your thesis was actually on "Roman brick manufacture in
Upper Moesia during the early Principate")?

[Yllanes]

perhaps I'm missing the point of your story, but why can't you build a galss that, at a certain level of intensity, starts to actively absorb the light?

If you attenuate a red laser, you would also attenuate regular red light, etc. So your glasses to prevent soldiers from being blinded would effectively blind them themselves.

[joobz]

If you attenuate a red laser, you would also attenuate regular red light, etc. So your glasses to prevent soldiers from being blinded would effectively blind them themselves.
Only if you have passive attenuation. That's why I mentioned an active system. You can easily generate a film that, upon applying a current, it becomes opaque in a specific wave length. So, all you really need to do, is create a system that senses high light intensity and adjusts it's opacity in response. The story sounded more like a person with a lack of design imagination. It's why I asked.

[joobz]

Electromagnetic wave theory says that you can't do that. At least as far as I can tell/learned. The wave attenuation happens at all frequencies just in varying amounts. Even if you were to design a glass which attenuates a certain frequency it would be easy to hop over to another spectrum which is how those weapons actually work. Radar jamming/Radar works in the same mannor.
see above comment. have it dim at all wavelengths. AGain, it's a breif intervention to prevent blinding. The glass would become black at that instant, but you would prevent eye damage. think of it like eye body armor. enough of a preventative to give the soldier a chance to get out of harms way.

[Janot]

A Ph.D. generally means that, at least at one point in the person's life, they were able to demonstrate the minimum competency necessary to do original work in a given field.
....
We could also get into what a Ph.D. does NOT mean: It does not mean you are suddenly an absolute expert on anything. It does not mean that your ideas are impervious to challenge, even from those who lack such honors. It does not automatically mean you are more fit to perform a particular job, Etc.

But, how am I doing so far?

You are doing very well so far. As I see it, in the UK the PhD has another significance. The first degree B.Sc. or B.A. has been devalued to such an extent in the past 40 years that it says nothing positive. In fact, if you applied for a job with a 3rd class degree in noddy studies, it is official evidence that you are not particularly bright, and you are probably better off pretending you did something else for 3 years. Employers can choose those with a better degree result. In order to convince an employer that you can concentrate for more than 10 seconds, you need a Masters degree. To demonstrate that you can occasionally have an original thought, a PhD is required. 40 years ago, a B.Sc. or B.A. would probably have done the same.

[Wowbagger]

I prefer to think of it as an extension of the medieval guild system (which, in fact, it is). That actually explains the word "Philosophy" in it better than other descriptions I have read, I think. The word "Philosophy" is probably a throwback to those ancient days when there was no perceived difference between science and philosophy.

It means people without PhD's have all the more reason to seek ways to discredit you and what you have to say. That's what JREF is for, right?

And yes, it works the other way, some PhDs are completely and utterly wrong in their beliefs about anything, even in their fields of expertise. Perhaps a Ph.D. ultimately means you were able to impress a small number of highly ranked academics, at least at one point in your life.

Im reminded of my Linear Systems professor and the story of after he got his PHD and started working at the college I currently attend. There was a research project for the government involving blocking out lasers that are used to blind a soilder's eyes. He was asked to work on this project. His immediate response was to tell the person that it violated the laws of physics namely the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between laser light and regular light. At the risk of derailing this thread too much: Can't you build a detector that senses if the photons hitting it are too-often quantumly identical to each other?
That would probably block out a whole range of lasers, though, not just the particular narrow range that would blind someone.

It means that you can get a job. In my country companies in the field of biochemistry/molecular biology expect that level of eduction in an applicant :mad: That's just not right. It's like other businesses I know that only hire MBs for certain things. :rolleyes:

[quixotecoyote]

Given that in order to get a PhD you have to have already done a doctoral thesis and (usually) a masters thesis, it's a mark that you have considerable knowledge in a given field and in-depth expertise in a specific area within that field.

For example, I'm working on my masters in Communication right now. If you asked me about interpersonal com theories or specific neo-Aristotelian methods I could avoid embarrassing myself, but I couldn't give you an expert answer.

However, by the time I'm done with my thesis (assuming I get approval, which I expect I will) I will be able to tell you quite a bit about communication strategies employed by CAM practitioners as opposed to conventional medicine. Plus I'm trying to develop a synthesis of fantasy theme analysis and framing analysis for use in studying isolated texts that should lead to some publishable articles. Ask me about those things now and you'll get a long answer. Ask me about them in two years after I've been focusing on studying them for a masters degree and you will get close to an expert opinion. Ask me in four years after I have a doctorate degree and you probably won't find anyone with equivalent knowledge. This is theoretical, as I may expand or shift my focus slightly, but I think it makes the point.

[Wowbagger]

Given that in order to get a PhD you have to have already done a doctoral thesis and (usually) a masters thesis, it's a mark that you have considerable knowledge in a given field and in-depth expertise in a specific area within that field. I didn't say it was going to be easy to impress the small group of high ranking academics.

For example, I'm working on my masters in Communication right now. If you asked me about interpersonal com theories or specific neo-Aristotelian methods I could avoid embarrassing myself, but I couldn't give you an expert answer.

However, by the time I'm done with my thesis (assuming I get approval, which I expect I will) I will be able to tell you quite a bit about communication strategies employed by CAM practitioners as opposed to conventional medicine. Plus I'm trying to develop a synthesis of fantasy theme analysis and framing analysis for use in studying isolated texts that should lead to some publishable articles. Ask me about those things now and you'll get a long answer. Ask me about them in two years after I've been focusing on studying them for a masters degree and you will get close to an expert opinion. Ask me in four years after I have a doctorate degree and you probably won't find anyone with equivalent knowledge. This is theoretical, as I may expand or shift my focus slightly, but I think it makes the point. To make a long story short: Preparing for a Ph.D. ranks you as a top expert in the narrowly specified subject of your own thesis.

This, in turn, allows you to do original work in that field. But, beyond that narrow field, you can still be challenged by anyone else. And, eventually, even your narrow expertise will be challenged by someone else who digs deeper into an even narrower view the subject than you did.

[quixotecoyote]

I didn't say it was going to be easy to impress the small group of high ranking academics.

To make a long story short: Preparing for a Ph.D. ranks you as a top expert in the narrowly specified subject of your own thesis.

You say that like it's not significant.



This, in turn, allows you to do original work in that field. But, beyond that narrow field, you can still be challenged by anyone else. And, eventually, even your narrow expertise will be challenged by someone else who digs deeper into an even narrower view the subject than you did.Granted you may only be the authority on your narrow field, but by that point you should still be well informed on the discipline as a whole and an expert in the broad category your specialty inhabits. Granted, that says nothing about your expertise outside your discipline, but no honest person would claim that.

In other words, I could probably show up Dr. Fetzer regarding 9/11 conspiracies. However, I wouldn't bet money I could match his expertise on philosophical issues of artificial intelligence and I would have strong hesitation before opposing him on philosophical theory in general.

[Wowbagger]

You say that like it's not significant. :boxedin: Sorry. Like I said, I do, generally, have tremendous respect for Ph.D. recipients. (But, not those who abuse the privileges.)

It is definately something significant.

In other words, I could probably show up Dr. Fetzer regarding 9/11 conspiracies. However, I wouldn't bet money I could match his expertise on philosophical issues of artificial intelligence and I would have strong hesitation before opposing him on philosophical theory in general. Good example.

[quixotecoyote]

Yay agreement :cheerleader2

[bpesta22]

I think the Ph.D.'s an important credential. Having it gives you some authority to speak on a topic (I don't think appeal to authority is always a fallacy). At the end of the day, though, if your proudest accomplishment is getting a Ph.D., you haven't done much.

The odds a randomly selected person with a high school diploma will have a higher IQ than a randomly selected Ph.D.: 1 in 100.

I've noticed over the years that neither Randi nor some of the jref regulars put much stock in ph.d.'s. I think that's unfair. Randi's made the point a few times that being a scientist / Ph.D. doesn't mean you can't / won't be fooled. That's true. But being a magician doesn't mean you'll always find things the Ph.D. will miss.

Also, I think teaching ability and having a Ph.D. are wholly uncorrelated. There are great teachers and crappy teachers; being a true expert in one's field doesn't predict how well one can teach, in my experience. Give me the best teacher in the sociology department. Give him two weeks and the book. I bet he will teach a business class better than half the department in the business college.

Clearly, the Ph.D. is the best doctorate; MDs are glorified mechanics; lawyers are more interested in the argument than the truth. Go ph.d!

:D

[mijopaalmc]

Clearly, the Ph.D. is the best doctorate; MDs are glorified mechanics; lawyers are more interested in the argument than the truth. Go ph.d!

:D

What about a Th.D.? Or an Ed.D.?

Not that I am trying to equate the two in any way.

[Complexity]

My thesis advisor told me this:

BS - bull $(^%
MS - more $%*)
PhD - piled higher and deeper.



Pissing for heighth and distance

[blutoski]

Be mindful that a PhD is more than just evidence that somebody has passed a hurdle at some point in her life: it's also an indicator that the person remains on the forefront of information in her field.

PhDs usually are involved in ongoing research. They are often experts in their field because of their proximity to new information, focus of knowledge in all the information in their field, and over the years, they have a sense of perspective that newcomers or outsiders lack.

The degree does afford them authority in their field in proportion to their experience and currency.

Randi et al are experts in skepticism and debunking, which is not a recognized doctoral field. All PhDs are outside their fields of expertise when dealing with the paranormal, and I am comfortable saying that they act as laypeople in this realm. When debunkers need technical advice, they need to be honest enough to turn to experts as required.

[Complexity]

Most people having moderate intelligence, patience, resources, and a willingness to jump through hoops can earn a Ph.D.

It doesn't require brilliance and it certainly doesn't require genius. It does require perseverence.

A Ph.D. candidate is expected to produce new knowledge. It need not be signficant new knowledge, simply new.

The only thing that many dissertations advance is their author.

There used to be a time, I believe, when defending one's thesis or dissertation was a serious event, in which one could expect serious challenges in a public forum over the course of several hours.

These days, any serious challenges are expected to be dealt with before the defense, and it will count as a mark against a Ph.D. candidate's advisor if everything hasn't been worked out in advance. Short, smooth, and efficient.

I don't believe that every member of doctoral committees gives a serious reading to every dissertation.

My concerns apply to the best programs. A great many programs have lower standards and practices.

[Complexity]

Be mindful that a PhD is more than just evidence that somebody has passed a hurdle at some point in her life: it's also an indicator that the person remains on the forefront of information in her field.

PhDs usually are involved in ongoing research. They are often experts in their field because of their proximity to new information, focus of knowledge in all the information in their field, and over the years, they have a sense of perspective that newcomers or outsiders lack.


I'm afraid I can't agree. Many Ph.D.'s have mastered the art of rephrasing their dissertation for the rest of their career.

Many do a remarkable job of remaining current and becoming cutting-edge experts, but many rest on their laurels.

I would never assume that a Ph.D. is either current with or an expert in any aspect of his field unless he is a very recent Ph.D.

[blutoski]

I think the Ph.D.'s an important credential. Having it gives you some authority to speak on a topic (I don't think appeal to authority is always a fallacy).

Appeal to authority is not, and has never been, a fallacy.

The fallacy is called "appeal to questionable authority."

A questionable appeal to authority would be, "Psychiatrists are ignorant about how to treat mood disorders. This is true because Tom Cruise says so." (using Cruise as an authority on psychiatry - he is an actor)





I've noticed over the years that neither Randi nor some of the jref regulars put much stock in ph.d.'s. I think that's unfair. Randi's made the point a few times that being a scientist / Ph.D. doesn't mean you can't / won't be fooled. That's true. But being a magician doesn't mean you'll always find things the Ph.D. will miss.

This is actually one of the three problems with current skepticism: perpetuation of the urban myth that turning to an authority is somehow not acting like a skeptic. If skeptics are sincere about promoting the scientific method, we need to foster a respect for science, which means a respect for experts in their fields.

That's why I point out above that skeptics have their own urban myth about something called "appeal to authority" as some kind of fallacy: it's not. Appeal to authority is part of how skepticism works. It's part of how science works.

The 'appeal to authority = fallacy' meme perpetuates in skeptical circles. It's our own little unsinkable duck.





Also, I think teaching ability and having a Ph.D. are wholly uncorrelated. There are great teachers and crappy teachers; being a true expert in one's field doesn't predict how well one can teach, in my experience. Give me the best teacher in the sociology department. Give him two weeks and the book. I bet he will teach a business class better than half the department in the business college.

Exactly. PhD and Education are different degrees (except for a PhD in education). It's inappropriate to say that a PhD is falling short of expectations because he is not good at passing knowledge to laypersons.

[blutoski]

I'm afraid I can't agree. Many Ph.D.'s have mastered the art of rephrasing their dissertation for the rest of their career.

We'll have to disagree. Maybe it's because I work in science that I get a distorted view of PhDs, but most are doing research continuously, and this means many disserations. Postdocs are quite common.




Many do a remarkable job of remaining current and becoming cutting-edge experts, but many rest on their laurels.

I would never assume that a Ph.D. is either current with or an expert in any aspect of his field unless he is a very recent Ph.D.

I wouldn't assume either. But it would be unfair to say that a few years after they complete their doctorate, they are the equivalent of a layperson.

This is what I'm disputing: the underlying theme that a PhD becomes meaningless as a sign of expertise. Not true.

It sounds more like a case of sour grapes.

[bpesta22]

blut and complexity-- thanks, I think I agree with all your points, though I am less cynical, and I think the average ph.d. is likely not an idiot, nor is he/she just cranking out multiple versions of the disser.


Thanks for the clarification re appeal to authority. I think you solved it for me.

B

[Complexity]

We'll have to disagree. Maybe it's because I work in science that I get a distorted view of PhDs, but most are doing research continuously, and this means many disserations. Postdocs are quite common.

I wouldn't assume either. But it would be unfair to say that a few years after they complete their doctorate, they are the equivalent of a layperson.

This is what I'm disputing: the underlying theme that a PhD becomes meaningless as a sign of expertise. Not true.

It sounds more like a case of sour grapes.


I didn't say that "a few years after they complete their doctorate, they are the equivalent of a layperson.", nor is that what I believe.

Nor am I saying that "a PhD becomes meaningless as a sign of expertise."

Sour grapes? Nah. Disappointed? Yeah.

I've had a Ph.D. for 17 years. I've known many people who have Ph.D.s. I got out of academia 12 years ago and have no interest in returning to it.

I decided to work for a Ph.D. for my own reasons, and I don't regret the time or effort. I do research for my own pleasure.

My comments flow from my experiences.

[Father Dagon]

You are doing very well so far. As I see it, in the UK the PhD has another significance. The first degree B.Sc. or B.A. has been devalued to such an extent in the past 40 years that it says nothing positive. In fact, if you applied for a job with a 3rd class degree in noddy studies, it is official evidence that you are not particularly bright, and you are probably better off pretending you did something else for 3 years. Employers can choose those with a better degree result. In order to convince an employer that you can concentrate for more than 10 seconds, you need a Masters degree. To demonstrate that you can occasionally have an original thought, a PhD is required. 40 years ago, a B.Sc. or B.A. would probably have done the same.LOL! The same goes for Sweden. The universities are basically factories for "take it out on the world"-feminists. (What else do you think that unlucrative literature, gender and women studies does?) Me, for personal reasons I haven't even finished one year of studies at the university. Yet people usually say that I'm smart and asks what my education is. So either I'm a good pretender, or I'm really that smart and educated.

Also, I'm pretty good at writing in swedish. But if you ask me about grammatical rules and terminology - beats me, I mostly go after the vibration (and no one has complained yet.)

Next stop after my personal issues has been solved is a 2 year course in 3D computer graphics. I want a job and I want it now, sort of. (So that I can buy all the books that I want.) Then, after a few years, I might return to the university. But only might since I can't stand people that thinks that beacuse they are masters of litterature, then they are entitled to special treatment. Sorry "unitards", there's no such thing as universal skills. Even mathematics has its limits.

P.S. Richard B. James/Aphex Twin can't read sheet music.

[Complexity]

Education has little to do with schooling.

[drkitten]

PhDs usually are involved in ongoing research. They are often experts in their field because of their proximity to new information, focus of knowledge in all the information in their field, and over the years, they have a sense of perspective that newcomers or outsiders lack.

I wish this were true. I think the actual statistics suggest that something less than half of Ph.D.'s are involved in ongoing research. Sometimes this is simple economics -- for example, the first post-Ph.D. job I was offered was at what is euphemistically called a "teaching" university. They had a standard courseload of 5/5, meaning I would be expected to teach five courses each fall and five each spring, which is more courses than the average undergraduate at that school took. With such a teaching load, the chances of my being able to maintain a research program would have been essentially nil; there would be no time. Even at a more research-intensive school, once one is past tenure, there are no consequences for simply "going to seed" and never again opening a lab door; I've known a number of such "deadwood" even at very good schools.

A lot of "industrial" Ph.D.'s simply get sucked out of "research" and into product development or something. And then of course, there are simply the Ph.D.'s who go into a non-research career entirely. E.E. "Doc" Smith had a Ph.D. in food science, and wrote junk SF books. I believe Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in Political Science, but is a career politician. (Indeed, a lot of senior serving military officers pick up Ph.D.'s as part of their Staff College training and such, although I can't name any names off-hand.)

It would be all-to-easy for me to throw over this whole academic thing and set myself up as some sort of all-purpose guru selling newage ideas and billing myself as drkitten, "Ph.D." Unlike, say, M.D.'s (who have to periodically re-licence and maintain skills through continuing ed., no one will ever be able to take my doctorate away from me).

[drkitten]

To make a long story short: Preparing for a Ph.D. ranks you as a top expert in the narrowly specified subject of your own thesis.


Not... quite. Or rather, yes, but that's not all it does.

There are actually several requirements (typically) to get a Ph.D., of which the dissertation is only one (hence the traditional phrasing of "a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements").

You also need to pass a Ph.D. qualifying exam, essentially a breadth requirement.

At my old school, for example, there was an annual series of seven exams, each covering a different sub-discipline. Masters' students were required to pass an exam in the sub-field of their specialization before graduation. Ph.D. students were required to pass three (of seven) exams before proceeding to candidacy and starting their thesis research. So even before I started my original research, I demonstrably knew as much as any three Masters' holders. :D

Of course, this makes practical sense -- I can't rely on getting a teaching position in my research specialization, and I need to be able to deliver the general undergraduate (and even M.S.) curriculum to anyone. But it means that the Ph.D. education isn't quite as narrow as many nay-sayers like to suggest. Yes, I'm the world's expert on my thesis topic. But I also know quite a bit about the entire field, and I'm educated enough on research methods in general to be able to bring myself up to speed quickly on almost any discipline.

[timhau]

Here is the provisional answer I came up with, that I would like some feedback on:
A Ph.D. generally means that, at least at one point in the person's life, they were able to demonstrate the minimum competency necessary to do original work in a given field.

That's what they'd like you to think. The real answer is that once you get your PhD, your feces will cease to provide stimuli for olfactory sensations.

[Wowbagger]

I see there could be slightly more controversy on this topic, than I thought there could be. Fascinating set of comments all around. (I will respond to specific posts, later, when I have more time.) In the meantime I figured I could toss more fuel to one particular fire:

Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. It is illogical to assume "authorities are always right, and therefore anything they say would automatically be valid".

Citing authority, alone, is not enough. You also have to do a reasonable job making sure said authority is backed up by something more substantial, such as repeatable test results, or something.

[Janot]

Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. It is illogical to assume "authorities are always right, and therefore anything they say would automatically be valid".

Citing authority, alone, is not enough. You also have to do a reasonable job making sure said authority is backed up by something more substantial, such as repeatable test results, or something.During my PhD research on an Ancient Greek text, I had to wade through plenty of German scholarship from the first half of the 20th century (written in Latin!) . I was amazed to discover that the most common argument in any doctoral thesis was the unsupported citing of a higher authority, usually some German professor. They managed to contruct the most complex and spectacularly wrong systems all based on complete nonsense from earlier theses. Did this happen in the sciences as well?

[Complexity]

I had perhaps six citations of the work of others in my (computer science) disseration, but only one was of value - it contained a theorem that I used. The rest was background relevant to the problem but not to my approach.

The desired properties of my algorithms were proven in my dissertation.

In my doctoral program seven qualifying exams were offered twice yearly. Doctoral candidates had to take and pass three of the exams. If any exam was failed, the candidate had to take the same exam the next time it was offered and pass it or he would be dropped from the program.

In practice, only six exams were offered, since one hadn't been taken by anyone for a few years and people were afraid that anyone selecting that area would have to take a hellish exam written by faculty that would be irked that anyone had picked it again.

I took qualifying exams in qualifiers in Formal Theory, Programming Languages and Compiler Theory, and Artificial Intelligence. I passed them first time. I was a nervous wreck.

The research for my dissertation was a joy.

[Wowbagger]

I think the Ph.D.'s an important credential. Having it gives you some authority to speak on a topic (I don't think appeal to authority is always a fallacy). Like I stated earlier, it is, unless that authority's statements are backed up with evidence that can be independently evaluated. In which case, it is not just the authority you are citing, but ultimately his or her evidence.

At the end of the day, though, if your proudest accomplishment is getting a Ph.D., you haven't done much. Or, perhaps, at the end of the life. I imagine the actual day one acquires a Ph.D., they would be very proud of it. Although, you would hope they accomplish something more beneficial to mankind, by the end of their life.

The odds a randomly selected person with a high school diploma will have a higher IQ than a randomly selected Ph.D.: 1 in 100. What does IQ have to do with anything?!

I've noticed over the years that neither Randi nor some of the jref regulars put much stock in ph.d.'s. I think that's unfair. Randi's made the point a few times that being a scientist / Ph.D. doesn't mean you can't / won't be fooled. That's true. But being a magician doesn't mean you'll always find things the Ph.D. will miss. Randi could be extra cynical about them, because he regularly deals with people who abuse the Ph.D. Either their own doctorate (if they have one), and/or by misrepresenting someone else's work.

Also, I think teaching ability and having a Ph.D. are wholly uncorrelated. There are great teachers and crappy teachers; being a true expert in one's field doesn't predict how well one can teach, in my experience. Give me the best teacher in the sociology department. Give him two weeks and the book. I bet he will teach a business class better than half the department in the business college. I agree with this, very much!

Clearly, the Ph.D. is the best doctorate; MDs are glorified mechanics; lawyers are more interested in the argument than the truth. Go ph.d! (I give that honor to Dr. Demento.)

Be mindful that a PhD is more than just evidence that somebody has passed a hurdle at some point in her life: it's also an indicator that the person remains on the forefront of information in her field. Eh, maybe at least temporarily, but this is not always the case.

On going research takes discipline. Many Ph.Ds. have it, and continue doing great things, for a long, long time. But, clearly not all of them do.

Randi et al are experts in skepticism and debunking, which is not a recognized doctoral field. All PhDs are outside their fields of expertise when dealing with the paranormal, and I am comfortable saying that they act as laypeople in this realm. Not always. An evolutionary biologist can debunk the necessity of paranormal causes in the apparent design of life, for example. A physicist can debunk specific claims that a device can detect ghosts in a room.

When debunkers need technical advice, they need to be honest enough to turn to experts as required. This much is true.

Most people having moderate intelligence, patience, resources, and a willingness to jump through hoops can earn a Ph.D.

It doesn't require brilliance and it certainly doesn't require genius. It does require perseverence. I can buy this...

A Ph.D. candidate is expected to produce new knowledge. It need not be signficant new knowledge, simply new. ...and this could well be true enough...

The only thing that many dissertations advance is their author....although, I wouldn't be that cynical. I am sure most dissertations contribute something of value to humanity. (Even if it might not be very much nor terribly important.)

I don't believe that every member of doctoral committees gives a serious reading to every dissertation. And, I would not know about this. I wonder if there was ever a study done to see how "seriously" committee members read each dissertation they have to evaluate.

Appeal to authority is not, and has never been, a fallacy.

The fallacy is called "appeal to questionable authority." The fallacy is more accurately: "appeal to unsubstantiated authority".

A questionable appeal to authority would be, "Psychiatrists are ignorant about how to treat mood disorders. This is true because Tom Cruise says so." (using Cruise as an authority on psychiatry - he is an actor) If Tom Cruise's statements were backed up with adequately controlled scientific studies (hypothetically speaking, of course), then it could be valid to cite him, because you are ultimately pointing to those studies, not merely the fact that Tom Cruise had communicated it.

If I said "Evolution is false because Michael Behe says so", it is the same story. Michael Behe may have studied evolution, but his statements are as unsubstantiated as Cruise's, because he is not citing controlled studies.

This is actually one of the three problems with current skepticism: perpetuation of the urban myth that turning to an authority is somehow not acting like a skeptic. If skeptics are sincere about promoting the scientific method, we need to foster a respect for science, which means a respect for experts in their fields. Respect for experts capable of backing up their claims with evidence is what we should foster.

It is foolishness to respect someone doing science, merely because they are a doctor! We promote the scientific method better by demonstrating how no one gets a free ride from the clutches of its disciplines.

Education has little to do with schooling. Ain't that the truth!

There are actually several requirements (typically) to get a Ph.D., of which the dissertation is only one (hence the traditional phrasing of "a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements").

You also need to pass a Ph.D. qualifying exam, essentially a breadth requirement. Okay, so there are more hurdles than what I implied, before. Good to know. But, the general idea holds.

Yes, I'm the world's expert on my thesis topic. But I also know quite a bit about the entire field, and I'm educated enough on research methods in general to be able to bring myself up to speed quickly on almost any discipline. Good for you! In a perfect world, all doctors would be like that.

During my PhD research on an Ancient Greek text, I had to wade through plenty of German scholarship from the first half of the 20th century (written in Latin!) . I was amazed to discover that the most common argument in any doctoral thesis was the unsupported citing of a higher authority, usually some German professor. They managed to contruct the most complex and spectacularly wrong systems all based on complete nonsense from earlier theses. Did this happen in the sciences as well? A perfect example of why it is important to look at what is being used to back up the claims.

The research for my dissertation was a joy. The discovery of new knowledge should be a joy, for everyone!

[Father Dagon]

Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. It is illogical to assume "authorities are always right, and therefore anything they say would automatically be valid".Not always. If a police officer or a firefighter tells you that the road is blocked or something, they are usually right. (And a real police is never afraid to show you the badge. Firefighters don't need badges, the fire truck is proof enough.) And raising children is as authoritarian as it gets.

[bpesta22]

I wonder if it's because this is a skeptic's board where we get lots of extraordinary claims (which demand more proof than appeal to authority). I don't think it's a fallacy in most cases (the exception being extra-ordinary claims).

If my doctor prescribes a pill for my ED, I will likely take it and trust his authority. If I posted a question about physics I would probably consider the replies here accurate, trusting the authority of the posters here. Both I think are perfectly rational.

If you ask an expert to summarize the state of knowledge in his/her field, I'm not sure believing what he said (or referencing it to support a point) would be irrational.

Appeal to authority has some low level inductive strength. Trust me, I know because I took lots of logic classes!

[Wowbagger]

Not always. If a police officer or a firefighter tells you that the road is blocked or something, they are usually right. Because they have the power to block said roads. If they say a road is blocked, it is safe to assume so, because we know they are granted that power.

No one has the power to make their own scientific facts. If someone says something is true, scientifically, they must be prepared to have their evidence independently evaluated and scrutinized.

And raising children is as authoritarian as it gets. Only temporarily, when the child is very young. Over the course of raising the child, you should encourage him or her to think independently, and even challenge your authority on something, if they don't see your demands as reasonable.

Of course, I don't have any children, yet, so maybe I am being naive.



I wonder if it's because this is a skeptic's board where we get lots of extraordinary claims (which demand more proof than appeal to authority). I don't think it's a fallacy in most cases (the exception being extra-ordinary claims). I say that, technically speaking, it is still a fallacy. But, in real life we are sometimes a little looser in how strictly we enforce it at such.

If my doctor prescribes a pill for my ED, I will likely take it and trust his authority. If I posted a question about physics I would probably consider the replies here accurate, trusting the authority of the posters here. Both I think are perfectly rational. I agree that in these cases, it would usually be rational.

No one is expected to spend an inordinate amount of time researching and double-checking every single dang thing that anybody ever says to you. At some point, you have to make reasonable compromises.

Appeal to Authority is still a fallacy, but you are simply choosing strategic situations in which it is safe to ignore that fact. Even the most rational person would be obligated to do so, at some point.

Trust me, I know because I took lots of logic classes! :rolleyes: ...
(Dang, I like you too much to make a sarcastic comment here.)

[TonyL]

Im reminded of my Linear Systems professor and the story of after he got his PHD and started working at the college I currently attend. There was a research project for the government involving blocking out lasers that are used to blind a soilder's eyes. He was asked to work on this project. His immediate response was to tell the person that it violated the laws of physics namely the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between laser light and regular light.

Well, that's what they get for asking a linear guy to work on a nonlinear optics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics) problem!

[Redtail]

Speaking in an artistic context, (I have an MFA in acting) on the surface a Ph.D means one went to school longer than most other people. Some go on to do great things in that field some have a nice paper to hang on their wall. I give respect to those who have gone that route and succeeded, but I won't assume they are better than someone else in that same field just because they have one.

[Modified]

In my doctoral program seven qualifying exams were offered twice yearly. Doctoral candidates had to take and pass three of the exams. If any exam was failed, the candidate had to take the same exam the next time it was offered and pass it or he would be dropped from the program.

Thankfully, in my program a sufficiently high GRE subject test score (top ten percent) may be substituted for the qualifying exams.

I've been ABD for a long time, mainly because I've been well funded and well paid in somewhat practical research. If this continues, I may never finish.

[pgwenthold]

Speaking in an artistic context, (I have an MFA in acting) on the surface a Ph.D means one went to school longer than most other people.

True, but that is not what it actually means. A PhD is beyond mastery of the field. You could take all the courses advertised by your university (undergraduate and gradute), and it would not constitute a PhD. A PhD is a qualitatively different beast.

As has been noted, it is not just mastery of the material (which is a Masters Degree), it is the demonstrated ability to create new information in the field. What you need to learn to get a PhD is not something that can be found in a textbook or taught in a classroom.

It is not just "going to school longer."

[Redtail]

True, but that is not what it actually means. A PhD is beyond mastery of the field. You could take all the courses advertised by your university (undergraduate and gradute), and it would not constitute a PhD. A PhD is a qualitatively different beast.

As has been noted, it is not just mastery of the material (which is a Masters Degree), it is the demonstrated ability to create new information in the field. What you need to learn to get a PhD is not something that can be found in a textbook or taught in a classroom.

It is not just "going to school longer."

Ok, again just speaking of from an artistic point of view, what would constitute the creation of new information?

[drkitten]

Ok, again just speaking of from an artistic point of view, what would constitute the creation of new information?

If you are only looking at it from the artistic point of view, there is no purpose to a Ph.D. and you shouldn't be looking at programs. (Similarly, if you just want to be a fry cook, there's no reason to get a Ph.D.) The Ph.D. is an academic degree, not an artistic one, and represents mastery of academic analysis -- in this case, of art.

For example, I dug up an NYU fine arts professor on-line and his dissertation topic was : "Joan Miró Before The Farm, 1915-1922: Catalan Nationalism and the Avant-Garde." Another guy at Yale did his on “Roman Black-and-White Figural Mosaics from the first through the third centuries A.D.” Fairly dry stuff, perhaps too much like art history for your tastes. But there's also room for work on the "theory" of art, the philosophy of art, the relationship of art to other fields (what does "feminism" or "nationalism" mean in dance, for example?).


The University of Edinburgh puts it fairly well on their website:


The newly launched PhD in Fine Art involves a combination of academic research and studio creativity, supervised, respectively, at the University and at the Edinburgh College of Art. Students embark upon an investigation of a research question or problem, and the outcome of that investigation would be two types of work, distinct in means but integrally connected in content. These are a 50,000 word thesis, on a historical, critical or theoretical topic, and a body of artistic work, realised in a visual medium of the candidate's choice.

[Jeff Corey]

A 50,000 word thesis? Piled Higher and Deeper, indeed. My dissertation was 28 single spaced pages. It falsified a prevalent theory and was never published. But I got better.

[drzeus99]

Behe might be the biggest buffoon with a PhD that I'm aware of.

Cheers,
DrZ

[drzeus99]

Pissing for heighth and distance

Ouch...Here's a MAJOR pet peeve of mine (and most people I know).
The word HEIGHT ends in a T and sounds like it ends in a T.

It doesn't have (in spelling or pronunciation) the "TH" that's at the
end of Length and Width.

Too many people, when speaking, say lengTH, widTH, heighTH...

Now, it may be a typo only, but I've heard WAY TOO many people say a TH at the end of height (it's correctly pronounced HYT)...NO TH AT END!

Sorry...had to rant. Rough day....


Cheers,
DrZ

[drzeus99]

True, but that is not what it actually means. A PhD is beyond mastery of the field. You could take all the courses advertised by your university (undergraduate and gradute), and it would not constitute a PhD. A PhD is a qualitatively different beast.

As has been noted, it is not just mastery of the material (which is a Masters Degree), it is the demonstrated ability to create new information in the field. What you need to learn to get a PhD is not something that can be found in a textbook or taught in a classroom.

It is not just "going to school longer."


True. And with full respect to those with PhD's, it's also not the hardest thing in the world to do. You don't have to come up with a new theory of something that will amaze the world.

For example. To earn a PhD, someone surely has written about the mating habits of a fruitfly. You get a bunch of fruitflies, monitor the temperature of them (and the environment), feed them different things, record day, time, lighting conditions, humidity (and a million other conditions). Have some test groups..repeat..write a detailed report of your observations, and bingo..PhD.

That's simplifying it greatly. But you get my drift. I've had friends get PhD's and write a thesis on some of the silliest stuff (that no one else had done before). As long as your info is new and correct, it's valid. It doesn't have to be life changing. A clever person can make getting their PhD a fun and interesting thing, instead of sweating over it (like many people do).

But if the person has brains, common sense, ingenuity, it's very very doable.

And again..ALL RESPECTS to those that have earned their PhD's. Great going!
Nothing to take away from that accomplishment.


Cheers,
DrZ

[digithead]

I've gone back to school to finish my Ph.D. after a somewhat lengthy career as a statistician and researcher in a variety of disciplines...

It's both a personal goal and it gives me the union card to get a tenure-track position which will allow me to focus on the research topics that I'm interested in rather than what research topics my former employers told me to do...

The Ph.D. is the culmination of a lot of hard work, self-sacrifice, and delayed gratification. But a lot of other fields, including the blue collar professional trades (e.g. electricians, plumbers, etc.) also put forth a lot of effort so I really don't view it as "better" than any other form of education or life experience but it does represent the pinnacle of academia...

As for idiot Ph.D.s, I've met more than a few from which I discovered that a Ph.D. is no guarantee against stupidity...

More than stupidity, however, is the hubris that I often witness in those with a Ph.D. or other advanced degrees such as an M.D. or J.D...

Nonetheless, working in academia is still a heck of lot better than most other jobs. I've been on the wrong end of a shovel, "publish or perish" is a lot more enjoyable...

Now I need to get back to work on my dissertation so I can goof off tomorrow watching football and eating turkey with the minimal amount of guilt...

[Complexity]

Ouch...Here's a MAJOR pet peeve of mine (and most people I know).
The word HEIGHT ends in a T and sounds like it ends in a T.

It doesn't have (in spelling or pronunciation) the "TH" that's at the
end of Length and Width.

Too many people, when speaking, say lengTH, widTH, heighTH...

Now, it may be a typo only, but I've heard WAY TOO many people say a TH at the end of height (it's correctly pronounced HYT)...NO TH AT END!

Sorry...had to rant. Rough day....

Cheers,
DrZ


What a prescriptivist. Get a grip.

'heighth' is a variant of 'height'. The choice of which one to use in a sentence is often influenced by the beginning of the word that follows it. The 'th' ending of 'heighth' flows nicely into 'and'.

I like it. That is sufficient.

If you need more, check some dictionaries. Try the OED.

[Wowbagger]

Behe might be the biggest buffoon with a PhD that I'm aware of. I'm still trying to decide between him and Dr. Gary Schwartz.

Hmmmm....

[BPScooter]

Hi, some great thoughts here. From my experience, I agree w/ drkitten that although my dissertation research was very focused on a particular and rather narrow area, the coursework and examinations requirments were sufficient to establish that I knew my stuff across the span of the discipline, historical, theoretical, and in practice. It was a good program. I also agree that the almost ritualistic rigor of it was like a fraternity hazing that I have never experienced before or since, not even through very thorough peer reviews of later projects. So it is like a union card or "master" piece in that it establishes under extreme circumstances one's ability to rise to the challenge. Again, probably only at programs that work that way.

Digithead I think is the first to comment on the practical, career aspect in a lot of disciplines. One can't reasonably hope to gain a tenure-track position at an American research university, or most regional comprehensive universities, without the "terminal degree" which is in a lot of cases the Ph.D, sometimes the Ed.D., DMA, or other equivalents. I know this from probably three search committees I've been on that have been very harrowing--we advocated the hiring of a person without such degree, for good reasons (like extensive related job experience, related productivity, established reputation as an educator, etc.). It was an Uphill Battle from the beginning, the Deans and higher administrators are really not listening to that at the moment. Similar to what's happening in teacher certification in public schools--demands for "highly qualified teachers" in the NCLB act are driving degree requirments in various ways, no longer is a BS in Education viable, one needs a BS in the field of specialty in a lot of places.

When I encounter a student that has doctoral aspirations, I frankly tell them that they better have the financial and personal flexibility to see a program through in terms of paying for it, moving to a new place where the best program for them is offered, etc. They need to have the fortitude and persistence and humility to "suck it up" for a while, but also the ability to stand their ground and be focused on the successful completion of the degree. No illusions, don't expect an easy ride but also refuse to give up. And then, I feel like the best I can do for them is to pull no punches, and frankly evaluate their ideas, their writing, their overall efforts. This sometimes can be harsh, but at this point in one's education I think one needs to be ready to learn whether one has the Right Stuff or not. That being said, if a student really can't write well or think critically, I offer them ideas and help as to how they can grow in those areas. But I'm not going to shine them on or hold their hand or rewrite their drafts for them.

[Complexity]

I heard long ago that the length of graduate program (M.?. + Ph.D.) was (quite roughly) inversely proportional to the number of open positions upon graduating.

For example, the time required from B.S. to Ph.D. in computer engineering was 3 - 4 years, while the time required for B.A. to Ph.D. in art history was about 11 years.

If there are fewer jobs than Ph.D. graduates, it doesn't pay to graduate quickly.

Some graduate programs will pay you to go to school, while others will suck the money right out of you.

Fellowships will usually give you a free ride for a while: free tuition and a monthly stipend for studying.

Research assistanships and teaching assistantships will also give you free tuition and a monthly stipend, but they expect something from you in return - about 20 hours / week (actual time spent varies widely).

In computer science, from 1986 to 1990, I was on a fellowship for the first year and had teaching assistantships for the next three years. I received free tuition and about $1,000 a month. I also worked three summers, one in a material sciences lab, and two in a graduate internship with IBM. I only had to borrow about $1,000 during my graduate-school years.

The story is quite different for many other fields, I'm afraid.

[DRBUZZ0]

I saw an online video on how the gobment is killing the world with HAARP, the thing in alaska, which was claimed to be a death ray that could do all sorts of things to make everyone ill and alter the weather and whatnot.

The guy introduced himself as Dr. Such-and-Such, and then went on to say he had a Ph.D. in bioenergy studies from the university of Sri Lanak. I'm thinking to myself, this guy is about as far from an accredited, trustworthy, knowledgeable scholar and person of science as I can imaging.

I don't see him as worthy of the title "doctor" since that's a term of respect or even the term "mister" because that can be respectful too. I prefer to call him "Idiot"

[Wowbagger]

The guy introduced himself as Dr. Such-and-Such, and then went on to say he had a Ph.D. in bioenergy studies from the university of Sri Lanak. I'm thinking to myself, this guy is about as far from an accredited, trustworthy, knowledgeable scholar and person of science as I can imaging. Oh yeah, and just what accreditations have you earned to be called Doctor Buzz0, aye?! ;)

[DRBUZZ0]

Oh yeah, and just what accreditations have you earned to be called Doctor Buzz0, aye?! ;)

My doctorate is every bit as legitimate as my last name being Buzz0

[shadron]

A boss that I once had, who held a PhD from MIT in Electrical Engineering, told me the story of winning his masters degree (also at MIT). When his wife mentioned to the other wives of men in the physics department, with whom he hung out, that he'd earned his masters, all she got from the other wives was expressions of sympathy. It seems that in physics, unlike engineering, the masters degree is considered a consolation prize for someone with not enough drive to push through to the end.

Personally, I earned a masters degree in electrical engineering as well, based in a paper concerning an application in phase-locked loops in "optimal" receivers. I don't think, in the digital age, that PLLs are of very much interest anymore, but I really don't know, because I went into computer engineering and never used whatever high-level expertise I had in EE again. However, all is never lost; what was useful forever is the experience of getting the degree and a lot of ancillary information and skills gained along the way.

[blutoski]

I didn't say that "a few years after they complete their doctorate, they are the equivalent of a layperson.", nor is that what I believe.

Nor am I saying that "a PhD becomes meaningless as a sign of expertise."

Sour grapes? Nah. Disappointed? Yeah.

I've had a Ph.D. for 17 years. I've known many people who have Ph.D.s. I got out of academia 12 years ago and have no interest in returning to it.

I decided to work for a Ph.D. for my own reasons, and I don't regret the time or effort. I do research for my own pleasure.

My comments flow from my experiences.

Complexity:

Sorry if it seemed like my post was specifically talking about you personally.

It was intended to take your points into consideration when replying to the original post, mostly directed to other readers who shared my suspicion about underlying motive.

[Pyrts]

Given that in order to get a PhD you have to have already done a doctoral thesis and (usually) a masters thesis, it's a mark that you have considerable knowledge in a given field and in-depth expertise in a specific area within that field.

Exactly.

My favorite paleontologist (PhD) tells me that when you get a Bachelors', you go out into the world with confidence that you know everything. By the time you get a Masters', you're beginning to suspect there are large gaps in your knowledge. By the time you finish your PhD, you're convinced you don't know a darn thing.

I'm doing my PhD in Information Sciences, and the more I learn about it, the bigger I realize the field is and just how little I know. When I'm finished, I will have some in-depth knowledge about cyborging and the impact on the person as well as on how one chooses bionic devices.

A PhD is generally a research degree. The Masters' is to some extent (not always). It's difficult to explain to folks just how different scientific research is from what folk knowledge relates about it.

And I sort of agree with the comment that it's a collection of letters that tend to make most people look down on you socially. I know a number of PhDs who don't mention their title in social situations.

[Pyrts]

In computer science, from 1986 to 1990, I was on a fellowship for the first year and had teaching assistantships for the next three years. I received free tuition and about $1,000 a month. I also worked three summers, one in a material sciences lab, and two in a graduate internship with IBM. I only had to borrow about $1,000 during my graduate-school years.

The story is quite different for many other fields, I'm afraid.

Oh yes. I'm paying around $20,000/year for mine... no stipends, no assistantships, no free tuition. Government funding for universities has dried up and research money for universities that do research that GWBush and company don't approve of has vanished to nothing. Me, I work 2-3 part-time jobs.

[Ysidro]

And then of course, there are simply the Ph.D.'s who go into a non-research career entirely. E.E. "Doc" Smith had a Ph.D. in food science, and wrote junk SF books.

Did you just call Lensmen junk?!? :jaw-dropp

[blutoski]

I say that, technically speaking, it is still a fallacy. But, in real life we are sometimes a little looser in how strictly we enforce it at such.

I agree that in these cases, it would usually be rational.

Yep. It's a legitemate format.




No one is expected to spend an inordinate amount of time researching and double-checking every single dang thing that anybody ever says to you. At some point, you have to make reasonable compromises.

What we do is use Argument from Authority. That's how the world works. It's how science works.

This is a very old discussion, and it's very explicitly laid out. This is a 2,000 year old discussion. Most recently restructured a bit in the 20th century by Popper and Kuhn.

Here are the criteria for Appeal to Authority (per my critical thinking textbook, circa 1992):

1. the authority has sufficient knowledge of the subject matter
2. the field of study exists
3. the field of study's community recognize the authority as such
4. there is adequate agreement within the field
5. the authority is not excessively biased
6. the authority is identified


If any of these criteria fail, then we do have a logical fallacy, but it's not called "Appeal to Authority," - the fallacy has several names:

* Fallacious Appeal to Authority
* Misuse of Authority
* Irrelevant Authority
* Questionable Authority
* Inappropriate Authority
* Argumentum Ad Verecundiam

But these are not invoked by merely appealing to authority. The appeal has to fail the above criteria, and then you no longer have an appeal to authority, and can't call it that. You have to use one of these fallacy names.





Appeal to Authority is still a fallacy, but you are simply choosing strategic situations in which it is safe to ignore that fact. Even the most rational person would be obligated to do so, at some point.

I'm not 'merely choosing strategic situations' - I'm laying out the definition of Appeal To Authority. When the criteria are fulfilled - the appeal is legitemate, it's called Appeal To Authority. When the criteria fail, you can't call it Appeal To Authority (the person is not an authority). Use the fallacy names.



It's frustrating for me, because it's an urban myth widely found among skeptics.

Appeal to Authority is a legitemate argument format.

Specifically, it is the argument format that establishes the framework for scientific thinking. (a subtype of inductive reasoning)

For example:

P1: My doctor says I have a cold, rather than the flu.
P2: Doctors are a reliable source for determining the difference between colds and flus.
C: Therefore, I probably have a cold, rather than the flu.

It's not a deductive format, just an inductive and somewhat probabilistic one. There will always be exceptions (in this example, your doctor could be a quack), but the format is valid.

Other examples:

P1: The Cochrane Collaboration is a reliable source of literature reviews
P2: The Cochrane Collaboration literature review on placebo effect says there is insufficient evidence to promote placebo effect as a cancer cure
C: Therefore, there is probably insufficient evidence to promote placebo effect as a cancer cure.


(Dang, I like you too much to make a sarcastic comment here.)[/SIZE]


?


Twenty years I've been teaching philosophy of science, and I've discovered that this fallacy is very hard to unteach.

[blutoski]

I wish this were true. I think the actual statistics suggest that something less than half of Ph.D.'s are involved in ongoing research. Sometimes this is simple economics -- for example, the first post-Ph.D. job I was offered was at what is euphemistically called a "teaching" university. They had a standard courseload of 5/5, meaning I would be expected to teach five courses each fall and five each spring, which is more courses than the average undergraduate at that school took. With such a teaching load, the chances of my being able to maintain a research program would have been essentially nil; there would be no time. Even at a more research-intensive school, once one is past tenure, there are no consequences for simply "going to seed" and never again opening a lab door; I've known a number of such "deadwood" even at very good schools.

A lot of "industrial" Ph.D.'s simply get sucked out of "research" and into product development or something. And then of course, there are simply the Ph.D.'s who go into a non-research career entirely. E.E. "Doc" Smith had a Ph.D. in food science, and wrote junk SF books. I believe Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in Political Science, but is a career politician. (Indeed, a lot of senior serving military officers pick up Ph.D.'s as part of their Staff College training and such, although I can't name any names off-hand.)

It would be all-to-easy for me to throw over this whole academic thing and set myself up as some sort of all-purpose guru selling newage ideas and billing myself as drkitten, "Ph.D." Unlike, say, M.D.'s (who have to periodically re-licence and maintain skills through continuing ed., no one will ever be able to take my doctorate away from me).

I hear what you're saying, but even if about half of PhDs in science are doing research, that's probably a much higher proportion than laypersons. I'll wager that the majority of people running clinical trials have a doctorate.

What I'm concerned about is the frustrating situation I find myself in where I have to explain to somebody who sent me an email that yes, the fact that their pet theory that they dreamed up on their sofa last week contradicts the opinion of a century of experts is, in fact, a problem with their claim. I am not obligated to say that now "opinion is divided" on the subject of the Law of Gravity because Buddy from Scranton disagrees. And as a biologist, I'm unqualified to make that decision - what I do is refer to the authorities. That's what makes me a functional skeptic.

I'm reminded of that scene in Black Adder II - the one with Tom Baker as Cpt Rum:

Edmund: Look, there's no need to panic. Someone in the crew will know how to steer this thing.

Rum: The crew, milord?

Edmund: Yes, the crew.

Rum: What crew?

Edmund: I was under the impression that it was common maritime practice for a ship to have a crew.

Rum: Opinion is divided on the subject.

Edmund: Oh, really? [starting to get the picture]

Rum: Yahs. All the other captains say it is; I say it isn't.

Edmund: Oh, God; Mad as a brush.


To a large extent, the skill of a skeptic is the recognition of one's limits, being able to identify - and having access to the opinions of - the qualified authorities.

[fuelair]

What does having a Ph.D. really mean?




More likely you will get certain jobs over others not PhD(or other legitimate doctorate).
More likely you will be considered for/get grants.
Your opinions in your field will be considered more valid.
(bad one)Your opinions NOT in your field will be considered more valid (by many who don't know any better).

[Wowbagger]

I heard long ago that the length of graduate program (M.?. + Ph.D.) was (quite roughly) inversely proportional to the number of open positions upon graduating.

For example, the time required from B.S. to Ph.D. in computer engineering was 3 - 4 years, while the time required for B.A. to Ph.D. in art history was about 11 years.

If there are fewer jobs than Ph.D. graduates, it doesn't pay to graduate quickly. Interesting. This could lead into discussions about the economics of education strategies.

It seems that in physics, unlike engineering, the masters degree is considered a consolation prize for someone with not enough drive to push through to the end.
I call that prejudice.

My favorite paleontologist (PhD) tells me that when you get a Bachelors', you go out into the world with confidence that you know everything. By the time you get a Masters', you're beginning to suspect there are large gaps in your knowledge. By the time you finish your PhD, you're convinced you don't know a darn thing. A legit Ph.D. recipient would think like that. Unfortunately, there are those whom are ever more confident that they know everything, after they acquire each degree.

More likely you will get certain jobs over others not PhD(or other legitimate doctorate).
More likely you will be considered for/get grants.
Your opinions in your field will be considered more valid.
(bad one)Your opinions NOT in your field will be considered more valid (by many who don't know any better). Yep. I'd say that's a fairly good summary of the massive paragraphs written previously.

What we do is use Argument from Authority. That's how the world works. It's how science works. That's weird. I thought science worked through repeating tests and comparing results.

Yes, after an experiment is run many, many times, and the results fall into predictable patterns, you can use Arg. From Auth.* as a shortcut when talking about science. But, in the end it is not the authority that matters, it is the results.

(* Is there a better abbreviation?)

Here are the criteria for Appeal to Authority (per my critical thinking textbook, circa 1992):

[snipped to save space]

But these are not invoked by merely appealing to authority. The appeal has to fail the above criteria, and then you no longer have an appeal to authority, and can't call it that. You have to use one of these fallacy names. Well, okay, I agree with your point of view...

However, my point of view may merely be a difference in semantics. I would say this: You have laid out criteria for which it is strategically legitimate to ignore the fact that Appeal to Authority, on its own, is a fallacy. And, your other, fancier, words are more specific examples of the fallacy, which we should probably use more often.

It's frustrating for me, because it's an urban myth widely found among skeptics. Perhaps it is only a myth, because there is a misunderstanding with what is meant by the words? From your phrasing, above, you are right. But, perhaps more skeptics tend to use my phrasing, which I am arguing, is also right.

The examples you gave (the doctor diagnosing the flu, and the one about The Cochrane Collaboration) could, from my point of view, be examples of that: Developing solid arguments about when it is most likely safe to indulge in Arg. from Auth., even though it is, strictly speaking, a fallacy (by itself).

[fuelair]

Interesting. This could lead into discussions about the economics of education strategies.

I call that prejudice.

A legit Ph.D. recipient would think like that. Unfortunately, there are those whom are ever more confident that they know everything, after they acquire each degree.

Yep. I'd say that's a fairly good summary of the massive paragraphs written previously.

That's weird. I thought science worked through repeating tests and comparing results.

Yes, after an experiment is run many, many times, and the results fall into predictable patterns, you can use Arg. From Auth.* as a shortcut when talking about science. But, in the end it is not the authority that matters, it is the results.

(* Is there a better abbreviation?)

Well, okay, I agree with your point of view...

However, my point of view may merely be a difference in semantics. I would say this: You have laid out criteria for which it is strategically legitimate to ignore the fact that Appeal to Authority, on its own, is a fallacy. And, your other, fancier, words are more specific examples of the fallacy, which we should probably use more often.

Perhaps it is only a myth, because there is a misunderstanding with what is meant by the words? From your phrasing, above, you are right. But, perhaps more skeptics tend to use my phrasing, which I am arguing, is also right.

The examples you gave (the doctor diagnosing the flu, and the one about The Cochrane Collaboration) could, from my point of view, be examples of that: Developing solid arguments about when it is most likely safe to indulge in Arg. from Auth., even though it is, strictly speaking, a fallacy (by itself).In the system I work in, there is a person whose business card reads: Dr. X. Y. Zee, PhD

[drkitten]

I call that prejudice.

Not quite. Since the Ph.D. is a research degree (and primarily so), while the M.S. is usually a taught degree, it makes sense that if your job is primarily research, the M.S. is next to valueless.

And there are relatively few non-research physics positions out there. (And there are buckets and buckets of research positions out there). Basically, by the time the research is done, so is the "physics" -- whatever you were working on has now turned from a physics problem into an engineering problem.

[drkitten]

Appeal to Authority is a legitemate argument format.

Specifically, it is the argument format that establishes the framework for scientific thinking. (a subtype of inductive reasoning)

For example:

P1: My doctor says I have a cold, rather than the flu.
P2: Doctors are a reliable source for determining the difference between colds and flus.
C: Therefore, I probably have a cold, rather than the flu.

It's not a deductive format, just an inductive and somewhat probabilistic one. There will always be exceptions (in this example, your doctor could be a quack), but the format is valid.

Well, this is one area where we get into duelling pedants.

The term "valid" has a technical meaning in logic -- and an inductive argument can never be "valid" in that technical sense. Similarly, an argument that is not "valid" is a "fallacy" (again, in a technical sense). The technical sense is, of course, that an argument that is "valid" can never have true premises but a false conclusion.

In this sense, "Argument from Authority" is indeed fallacious.

Indeed, in this sense, any empirically-derived science is also a house built of fallacies.

But that's part of what any philosopher of science should also recognize; the "authority" is only as good as the actual evidence backing it up, and even eminent, well-qualified scientists make mistakes from time to time. That's why experiments get replicated -- just because Prof. Dr. Bigg-Shotte measured X doesn't mean that it's not Y.

[Wowbagger]

Not quite. Since the Ph.D. is a research degree (and primarily so), while the M.S. is usually a taught degree, it makes sense that if your job is primarily research, the M.S. is next to valueless. Well, point taken if you are seeking a job primarily in research.

But that's part of what any philosopher of science should also recognize; the "authority" is only as good as the actual evidence backing it up, and even eminent, well-qualified scientists make mistakes from time to time. That's why experiments get replicated -- just because Prof. Dr. Bigg-Shotte measured X doesn't mean that it's not Y. Hey, that's what I was sayin'!

Indeed, in this sense, any empirically-derived science is also a house built of fallacies. Ah, but there is safety in replicable results - the kind you just don't get from any other kind of "philosophical fallacy" the pedants like to throw.

[drkitten]

Ah, but there is safety in replicable results - the kind you just don't get from any other kind of "philosophical fallacy" the pedants like to throw.

I'm not sure I agree. For example, the Genetic Fallacy, in all its myriad forms, basically comes down to an assessment of the truth of a statement based on the properties of the person who makes it.

But that's what courts do routinely. They call it "assessing credibility." If you have strong incentive to lie, for example, then I will not believe that what you tell me is true, while if you have strong incentive to lie the other way (what you are saying is very damaging to your side), then I am more inclined to believe it. If you have a history of telling falsehoods, then I won't believe what you tell me. And if you are a demonstrably moral person in other ways, I'm likely to trust your truthfulness.

Those are all fallacious. The biggest liar in the world can tell me that the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out.

But they're also reliable enough to have been incorporated into legal maxims (for example, "falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus" if I remember my dog-Latin correctly), and judges will rely upon them in making decision affecting millions of people and billions of dollars.

I prefer to reserve "fallacy" for the technical meanings, and use terms like "rational argument" to cover arguments that are reliable enough to get traction in real life. Sure, it's a fallacy to disregard a jailhouse informant who was promised a free pardon if he found the bad guy. But, boy, does it make sense.....

[Radrook]

Two people make an identical discovery. One has a A Ph.D.
Both decide to write a book about it. The one with the A Ph.D. gains editorial acceptance while the other does not.

Generally speaking, and all other things being equal, a Ph.D. gives a person more credibility over one who has a lesser degree and total superiority in credibility over a person with no degree at all. For example, you might know more about history than a Ph.D. college professor. But he'll land the professor job and you won't.

[Wowbagger]

I'm not sure I agree. For example, the Genetic Fallacy, in all its myriad forms, basically comes down to an assessment of the truth of a statement based on the properties of the person who makes it. My point is that, in science, if you doubt the person who makes the claim, for any reason, you can dupe the experiment and see the results for yourself*. That is why science is self-correcting, and stronger than any other method of finding facts.

(*assuming you have the resources to do so. I do recognize that this could be an issue with many types of experimentation.)

All your other comments about courts I can agree with. They, like other comments here, amount to differences in definitions and semantics.

[delphi_ote]

I didn't say it was going to be easy to impress the small group of high ranking academics.

To make a long story short: Preparing for a Ph.D. ranks you as a top expert in the narrowly specified subject of your own thesis.

This, in turn, allows you to do original work in that field. But, beyond that narrow field, you can still be challenged by anyone else. And, eventually, even your narrow expertise will be challenged by someone else who digs deeper into an even narrower view the subject than you did.
At least balance the cynicism with a little optimism. If the PhD is worth the paper it's printed on, they've also discovered new things no previous experts ever understood (insignificant though it may seem.) They've brought new knowledge to the species in the form of some original research. Even Michael Behe deserves respect for that.

[B3LYP/CEP-31G(d)]

This thread reminds me of an anecdote:

A man graduates MIT with a master's degree in physics and applies to McDonald's while he looks for longer-term employment elsewhere. After his application to McDonald's is declined, he asks the manager in what way he isn't qualified, given his Master's in physics. The manager replies, "I'm sorry, but all our physicists have Ph.D's".

[Modified]

... and research money for universities that do research that GWBush and company don't approve of has vanished to nothing.

Available money for the grants my group goes after (CS Education) was about cut in half shortly after the arrival of BushCo, and such grants were highly competitive before that. In CS, security and other military-related research is where you want to be right now.

[jazzmojo]

Oh yes. I'm paying around $20,000/year for mine... no stipends, no assistantships, no free tuition. Government funding for universities has dried up and research money for universities that do research that GWBush and company don't approve of has vanished to nothing. Me, I work 2-3 part-time jobs.

Perhaps you should try environmental science. geeDub can't buy a legitimate defense for the oil interests in acedemia.

I'm guessing those PhD's are not self-funding their research. Money has to be flowing from somewhere....

[Wowbagger]

At least balance the cynicism with a little optimism. If the PhD is worth the paper it's printed on, they've also discovered new things no previous experts ever understood (insignificant though it may seem.) They've brought new knowledge to the species in the form of some original research. I can agree with that!

Even Michael Behe deserves respect for that. Sure, he may have contributed some new knowledge, a long time ago, but when one starts abusing their privileges: selling subjective judgment, philosophy, and/or personal incredulity, seriously as a science, the respect should be extinguished; so that others, who still contribute actual scientific study to science, are better motivated to do their jobs.

My respect for Michael Behe, if it exists at all, you can fit into a matchbox, without taking out the matches, first.
If one of two things happened: If Behe started promoting Intelligent Design as only a mere philosophical approach to biology, OR if a miracle occurred in which empirical analysis finds actual evidence for the identity of the Designer, then I would be willing to change my mind.

A man graduates MIT with a master's degree in physics and applies to McDonald's while he looks for longer-term employment elsewhere. After his application to McDonald's is declined, he asks the manager in what way he isn't qualified, given his Master's in physics. The manager replies, "I'm sorry, but all our physicists have Ph.D's". :D
Welcome to the forum! You just won the Funniest Anecdote on This Thread, Thus Far, Award!

[drkitten]

Two people make an identical discovery. One has a A Ph.D.

Right there, I feel confident ignoring your pseudo-anecdote. The whole point of a Ph.D. is training in how to make discoveries.

Sure, there are self-taught guitar gods out there, but they're few and far between when compared to the number of people with formal training in music. And by and large, what makes the professional musicians professional is their training.


For example, you might know more about history than a Ph.D. college professor.

You might. But the chances are slim enough that they can often be ignored. What's much more likely is that you think that you know more about a subject than a Ph.D., but this usually blows up under close inspection. As Pyrtis put it, "when you get a Bachelors', you go out into the world with confidence that you know everything." For an example, I refer you to just about any thread in the "Conspiracy Theory" forum.

[delphi_ote]

Sure, he may have contributed some new knowledge, a long time ago, but when one starts abusing their privileges: selling subjective judgment, philosophy, and/or personal incredulity, seriously as a science, the respect should be extinguished; so that others, who still contribute actual scientific study to science, are better motivated to do their jobs.

My respect for Michael Behe, if it exists at all, you can fit into a matchbox, without taking out the matches, first.
If one of two things happened: If Behe started promoting Intelligent Design as only a mere philosophical approach to biology, OR if a miracle occurred in which empirical analysis finds actual evidence for the identity of the Designer, then I would be willing to change my mind.
Hmm... I guess meant "respect" in a different way. I don't think that Behe has anything like credibility anymore, but I was trying to imply that we should admire his accomplishment. He did something very few people are capable of doing. Pity or loathe the man he has become, sure, but remember that he was once a Prometheus.

[T'ai Chi]

In my experience, I've found that most of the people who say 'a PhD is just you giving a school money, etc.' are not so intelligent and may have an inferiority complex.

[Wowbagger]

Hmm... I guess meant "respect" in a different way. I don't think that Behe has anything like credibility anymore, but I was trying to imply that we should admire his accomplishment. He did something very few people are capable of doing. Pity or loathe the man he has become, sure, but remember that he was once a Prometheus. Yeah, sure, why not. Whatever.

In my experience, I've found that most of the people who say 'a PhD is just you giving a school money, etc.' are not so intelligent and may have an inferiority complex.
WHOA!! I actually agree with T'ai Chi on something!!! How did that happen?!! Whoa!!!

[delphi_ote]

Yeah, sure, why not. Whatever.
Sorry. I'm on the path to a PhD. I know it's *********** hard! :D

[DRBUZZ0]

I'm not one to put down education. I think those with a PhD do generally deserve respect for their acomplishment. But in the end it matters more what the message is than the messenger.

If somebody with three PhD's and a Nobel prize and every other kind of recognition you can imagine tells me that the way to cure all known diseases is to fill your socks with cole slaw, wear them for a day and then burry them under the full moon in a box shaped like an airplane, facing north. Well.... that's just not going to sway me no matter what their credentials or authority.


But it comes down to the fact that great scientists do not make for great science. Great scientists are considered great BECAUSE they have accomplished great science.

A doctorate means that you have shown some ability and received education beyond the normal. This does not guarantee you are correct nor does lack of education guarantee you are wrong. There are those who have come from nothing and gone on to upset the foundations of established science, but it's exceedingly rare. People tinkering in their garage do great things... occasionally... very occasionally. But those at universities and national laboratories do it far far more often.

It comes down to the fact that science is less about the messenger and more about the message. If you have a weird, unaccepted idea then you have to prove it. If you say that you can create a fusion reactor that costs $50 and produces ample energy, then if you build one and it works and you can show how it is done, then guess what: You win. Regardless of how many PhD's say it's not possible.

But... those with a good education are generally the ones who end up being correct, and hence all things being equal, they're the ones to listen to.

This is especially true when it's a consensus amongst many in the field.

You shouldn't trust any source 100% but I'm generally going to take the word of someone with high credentials with less of a grain of salt than someone with no background.

I would say history and the results speak for themselves.

[DRBUZZ0]

In my experience, I've found that most of the people who say 'a PhD is just you giving a school money, etc.' are not so intelligent and may have an inferiority complex.

Agreed 100% Well... in most cases at least. There are those who go around calling themselves Doctor such-and-such PhD because they got an honary doctorate when they donated $500 to the university of the Gilbert Islands or the University of Chad or Nigeria or something...


I think A certain mister L Ron Hubbard may have been accused of mail-ordering a few "educations" from some rather dubious sources... but then again... I could be wrong so please nobody sue me for implying that

[Thomas]

"Titles is something you hang on idiots" - P. A. Heiberg.

Original thinkers don't waste time on following the guidelines of paradigms, they make their own.

[drkitten]

Original thinkers don't waste time on following the guidelines of paradigms, they make their own.

Making your own paradigm is generally much more successful if you understand the existing paradigm that everyone else is working within. Even Kuhn, whose theories you seem to be mangling, recognized this. (Check out his writings on "normal science.")

Sure, someone could be so brilliant that they can completely re-define our view of the world without going through all that bothersome learning what our current view is. But you're not that someone. Nor is anyone you know.

[DRBUZZ0]

"Titles is something you hang on idiots" - P. A. Heiberg.

Original thinkers don't waste time on following the guidelines of paradigms, they make their own.


Haha.. that makes me laugh!

also...

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
~Carl Sagan

[Thomas]

Sure, someone could be so brilliant that they can completely re-define our view of the world without going through all that bothersome learning what our current view is. But you're not that someone. Nor is anyone you know.
Interesting conclusion, based on zero premisses (not unusual from you of course). I'm the head of a composers gathering, I have no training in music, yet I'm a producer, composer and record label owner, and no one has been able to place my latest album in any genre. That would make it, original, yes? My grandfather was head of the royal Danish opera, also with zero training in music. Would you like me to continue with the rest of the family?

Hehehe.. you surely talk-the-talk Doc K, but where are your original products? :)

[Thomas]

Haha.. that makes me laugh!

also...

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
~Carl Sagan
I think he meant, Buzz0 the clown.

[drkitten]

I'm the head of a composers gathering, I have no training in music, yet I'm a producer, composer and record label owner, and no one has been able to place my latest album in any genre. That would make it, original, yes?

No, it could just mean that it sucks the chrome off a trailer hitch. I get lots of "unclassifiable" papers from my students -- usually from the ones about to fail a class.


Hehehe.. you surely talk-the-talk Doc K, but where are your original products?

Amazon.com. Doing quite well; one is something like the 100,000th best-seller, which for niche non-fiction is very high indeed.

[Thomas]

No, it could just mean that it sucks the chrome off a trailer hitch. I get lots of "unclassifiable" papers from my students -- usually from the ones about to fail a class.
Maybe it's fusion of classical and electronica, think about it - outside your box ;) ...oij, I may be demanding too much here.

Amazon.com. Doing quite well; one is something like the 100,000th best-seller, which for niche non-fiction is very high indeed.
And what's original about it?

[drkitten]

Maybe it's fusion of classical and electronica, think about it


Goodness. That's a well-established genre, and has been since at least Walter Carlos' Switched-On Bach. Hell, that particular genre predates "electronica" as a genre. So are you doing more of the Mannheim Steamroller neo-pop approach, the straight up remakes like Isao Tomita, or the newage approach like Kitaro and Tangerine Dream?

You're right. I didn't consider the possibility that you were not only a talentless hack, but also an idiot who didn't know how to classify records, as well. I beg your pardon abjectly.

[Complexity]

I'm afraid that we can't use having published or popularity as a criterion.

I'm sure Behe is higher than 100,000.

[Thomas]

Goodness. That's a well-established genre, and has been since at least Walter Carlos' Switched-On Bach. Hell, that particular genre predates "electronica" as a genre. So are you doing more of the Mannheim Steamroller neo-pop approach, the straight up remakes like Isao Tomita, or the newage approach like Kitaro and Tangerine Dream?

You're right. I didn't consider the possibility that you were not only a talentless hack, but also an idiot who didn't know how to classify records, as well. I beg your pardon abjectly.
Cute as always, Wendy (not Walter anymore) Carlos didn't use breakbeats, syncopations etc., and synths has changed since the 70ies haha... And nor is it by any manner comparable to Tomita, he was into disharmony and more like, soundscapes, now and then. Do you have anything else to add? :)

Tell you what, why don't you add what is soooo original about your book, instead of escaping such a simple question?

EDIT: See, you were unable to get outside the box again, keep it coming Doc K :D

[DRBUZZ0]

I think he meant, Buzz0 the clown.

Oh ouch that hurts. Where did you ever come up with such an original comeback?

[Thomas]

Oh ouch that hurts. Where did you ever come up with such an original comeback?
I read Doc K's book :D

[solas]

it means you have the right to call me doctor :)

[Jeff Corey]

it means you have the right to call me doctor :)
But who wants to? I don't use it out of academe in case someone might mistake me for a cardiologist or something.

[solas]

But who wants to?

people who are having a heart attack?


(molecular biology-and it means I'm qualified to work in otherwise restricted fields)

[pgwenthold]

Making your own paradigm is generally much more successful if you understand the existing paradigm that everyone else is working within. Even Kuhn, whose theories you seem to be mangling, recognized this. (Check out his writings on "normal science.")

Sure, someone could be so brilliant that they can completely re-define our view of the world without going through all that bothersome learning what our current view is. But you're not that someone. Nor is anyone you know.

Think of someone like Einstein, who was someone so brilliant that he could completely re-define the way we view the world.

Unfortunately, he didn't do it without knowing what the current view was. In fact, it was his problems he was having with Maxwell Equations that got him in the right direction. His secret, IMO, was that he understood Maxwell Equations BETTER than everyone else.

The same type of thing can be said about Schroedinger and quantum mechanics. The Schroedinger equation is, without a doubt, an incredible inspiration, and absolutely brilliant. However, it didn't arise from nothing, and the form had been arrived at previously by the post-Newton mechanics, like Hamilton. Schroedinger had the insight to apply it to atomic systems and a revolution results.

Even the giants stood on the shoulders of giants.

[Thomas]

Think of someone like Einstein, who was someone so brilliant that he could completely re-define the way we view the world.
I'm not sure that he really redefined anything, he was more like an addition to Newton.

Unfortunately, he didn't do it without knowing what the current view was. In fact, it was his problems he was having with Maxwell Equations that got him in the right direction. His secret, IMO, was that he understood Maxwell Equations BETTER than everyone else.
Nah, he worked in a patents office, he probably stole it all :p

The same type of thing can be said about Schroedinger and quantum mechanics. The Schroedinger equation is, without a doubt, an incredible inspiration, and absolutely brilliant. However, it didn't arise from nothing, and the form had been arrived at previously by the post-Newton mechanics, like Hamilton. Schroedinger had the insight to apply it to atomic systems and a revolution results.

Even the giants stood on the shoulders of giants.
Not necessarily in arts tho, you can easily create great art from tabula rasa. It's just more convenient to adapt to already established de facto systems in science, like base-10 e.g., in order to get a wider audience. The same can be said for art schools of course, but then you're not really original.

[Jeff Corey]

Yeah, sure, why not. Whatever.


WHOA!! I actually agree with T'ai Chi on something!!! How did that happen?!! Whoa!!!
Just as an airplane crash can follow a person dreaming of one or being lobotomized by a chowder clam dropped by a seagull in a parking lot at Jones Beach, strange things sometimes do happen.

[blutoski]

Yes, after an experiment is run many, many times, and the results fall into predictable patterns, you can use Arg. From Auth.* as a shortcut when talking about science. But, in the end it is not the authority that matters, it is the results.

Unfortunately, there are lots of contradicting results. That's why skeptics prefer peer-reviewed publications over non-peer-reviewed publications. Any crank can produce "results". But their reputation improves our tendency to weigh them.

Again, this is the Popper/Kuhn debate - a debate that never ends. A modern day version of the Platonic Corruption elitism of the Socratic egalitarianism.

Basically, Popper said that the definition of a scientific fact was one that had withstood testing. The hypothetico-deductive epistemological demarcation of scientific knowledge. The problem is that realistically, not every hypothesis that is sustained is elevated to 'scientific fact', and the threshold is arbitrary. The threshold is drawn by experts, and they're a self-identifying community.

This is where Kuhn came in: he said that the definition of what was 'science' was what scientists said it was. Kuhn was trying to solve the problem for all of us in the real world, not just some hypothetical ideal Popperian universe.

My impression is that they're both right. Popper has solved the problem for how science builds the knowledgebase, but Kuhn has solved the question of how science accepts the models.




However, my point of view may merely be a difference in semantics. I would say this: You have laid out criteria for which it is strategically legitimate to ignore the fact that Appeal to Authority, on its own, is a fallacy. And, your other, fancier, words are more specific examples of the fallacy, which we should probably use more often.

No, it's more than that. Appeal to Authority is an argument format. Critical thinking is a pretty developed field, and if you crack open a conventional text on the subject, look up a list of fallacies, you won't find Appeal to Authority there. But you will find it in the section on argument formats.

Just as an example, another argument format relevant to science is Proof by Contradiction. It's deductive, whereas Appeal to Authority is inductive.

Here's Proof by Contradiction:

We want to prove ~A

P1: A
P2: ~C
P3: if A then B
P4: B
P5: if B then C
P6: C
(note: we now have C and ~C as premises - they contradict)
C: therefore ~A is true




Perhaps it is only a myth, because there is a misunderstanding with what is meant by the words? From your phrasing, above, you are right. But, perhaps more skeptics tend to use my phrasing, which I am arguing, is also right.

I'm arguing that it's not right, and the reason it's so popular is that somebody with a chip on his shoulder heard that there was a logical fallacy called Argument from Questionable Authority, misunderstood (give him the benefit of the doubt), and started a meme called Argument from Authority to badger skeptics into supporting Libertarian political views.




The examples you gave (the doctor diagnosing the flu, and the one about The Cochrane Collaboration) could, from my point of view, be examples of that: Developing solid arguments about when it is most likely safe to indulge in Arg. from Auth., even though it is, strictly speaking, a fallacy (by itself).

Nope.

[drkitten]

No, it's more than that. Appeal to Authority is an argument format. Critical thinking is a pretty developed field, and if you crack open a conventional text on the subject, look up a list of fallacies, you won't find Appeal to Authority there. But you will find it in the section on argument formats.

I disagree. I obviously can't present hardback books on an internet forum, but here are some pretty comprehensive electronic-sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

An appeal to authority or argument by authority is a type of argument in logic, consisting on basing the truth value of an assertion on the authority, knowledge or position of the person asserting it. It is also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge, but a fallacy in regard to logic, because the validity of a claim does not follow from the credibility of the source.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#authority (Simply listed and examples presented, no meaningful discussion.)

http://www.skepticwiki.org/index.php/Argument_from_Authority

Experts can also have vested interests (the opinion of a particular car company about which car is the most reliable may not be correct, ...). Finally, in many cases, especially regarding new developments or complex questions, experts can genuinely disagree among themselves, and the opinion of a single expert represents no more than a personal opinion.

One must also not neglect the possibility that an individual expert, or even a group of them, are simply wrong.

And, of course, our old friend St. Thomas Aquinas : Locus ab auctoritate est infirmissimus ("The argument from authority is the weakest.")


I'm arguing that it's not right,

Ahem. It really is this simple.

Is it possible for a recognized authority to be incorrect in the area of his expertise? (Example : Lord Kelvin said that it was not possible, on energetic grounds, for the sun to be millions of years old. That was well within his area of expertise. Thomas Watson said that there was a world market for about five computers. This was also well within his area of expertise; at the time, he ran the largest electronics company in the world.)

If so, then the argument format "X is true because a recognized expert said it" does not guarantee the truth of X.

Therefore, that argument format is fallacious.

The reason it's so popularly believed that the words of an authority does not make a statement true is probably at least peripherally related to the simple observation that they don't.

[blutoski]

I disagree. I obviously can't present hardback books on an internet forum, but here are some pretty comprehensive electronic-sources.

That's why reading the internet isn't a postsecondary transfer credit - its' the worlds largest pile of opinions. The Wikipedia entry on AfromA has been incorrect from day one, and reflects popular opinion only. My colleagues and I have made several attempts to correct this entry, but it gets reversed. No doubt by some guy in a basement with a 2L bottle of Coke who "knows better".

That's the reason we started the Skeptic Wiki.

Cheez Leweez, man. You're defending your claim that argument from authority is a fallacy with an argument from questionable authority. What am I supposed to think?





Is it possible for a recognized authority to be incorrect in the area of his expertise? (Example : Lord Kelvin said that it was not possible, on energetic grounds, for the sun to be millions of years old. That was well within his area of expertise. Thomas Watson said that there was a world market for about five computers. This was also well within his area of expertise; at the time, he ran the largest electronics company in the world.)

If so, then the argument format "X is true because a recognized expert said it" does not guarantee the truth of X.

Therefore, that argument format is fallacious.

That would be a fallacy, because it's a deductive structure. But who really does this?

Argument from authority is an inductive format. I'm unaware of a real-world argument that "guarantees" anything. You're creating a strawperson.

The format for Argument from Authority is:

(P1: X is an authority in subject Y, subject Y exists &c....)
(P2: A is covered by subject Y)
P3: X says A is true
C: Therefore, A is probably true

It's completely valid.

If it wasn't, then skeptics are screwed. We should shut up immediately, because even if we have personally conducted the experiments we cite, by asking people to accept our findings, we are asking them to take it on our own authority, and therefore committing a fallacy by presenting our results.





The reason it's so popularly believed that the words of an authority does not make a statement true is probably at least peripherally related to the simple observation that they don't.

Argument from Authority doesn't "make" a statement true. It makes it more likely to be true. That's why it's classified as an inductive argument format, and that's exactly how science functions. eg: failure to refute an hypothesis doens't prove the hypothesis, but it makes it more likely to be true. Past some arbitrary point, we call the hypothesis 'true'. The people who decide where this point lies are called 'scientists'.



A few years ago, the Mikkelsons and I had an argument over whether there was some danger in introducing a meme into the wild as an experiment. What was interesting was that skeptics were just as vulnerable to adopting an urban myth as anybody else, especially if it supported a skeptical view.

That particular urban myth died down, but the myth that argument from authority = fallacy perpetually cycles through skepticism. Just as soon as it's stamped out in one segment, it reappears with a vengeance in another. It's our own unsinkable duck, and it's tied to two social factors: political libertarianism and ordinary sour grapes.



To rewind a bit: the claim that arugment from authority is a fallacy and therefore should not be used completely disarms skeptics of all knowledge outside of personal experience. We would have to go back to being skeptical solipsists. Modern skeptics are not solipsists. That ship has sailed.

Modern skeptics revolve around the philosophy that supports the scientific method. Our special skill is the recognition of correct authorities and promoting their claims, and also the recognition of situations where there's a fallacious appeal to authority, and bringing attention to the fraud.

[Jeff Corey]

[QUOTE=blutoski;3199353...A few years ago, the Mikkelsons and I had an argument over whether there was some danger in introducing a meme into the wild as an experiment. What was interesting was that skeptics were just as vulnerable to adopting an urban myth as anybody else, especially if it supported a skeptical view...[/QUOTE]
Memes gone wild? Feral memes attacking the proletariat and bourgeoisie?
WTF are you talking about?

[drkitten]

That's the reason we started the Skeptic Wiki.

Which, you will note, is one of the sources I cited.



That would be a fallacy, because it's a deductive structure. But who really does this?

Anyone with enough training in formal logic -- say, two weeks of it -- to be familiar with the definition fo the word "fallacy."


Argument from authority is an inductive format. I'm unaware of a real-world argument that "guarantees" anything.

You've cited one yourself -- proof by contradiction. Indeed, most deductive arguments are real-world arguments.



The format for Argument from Authority is:

(P1: X is an authority in subject Y, subject Y exists &c....)
(P2: A is covered by subject Y)
P3: X says A is true
C: Therefore, A is probably true

It's completely valid.


That is indeed the format. And it's not at all "valid" -- as you should have learned in that same two weeks of logic. (It's also a deductive format. Didn't you just tell me that no one used AfromA deductively?)



If it wasn't, then skeptics are screwed.

Appeal to consequences. You should know better than that.

I submit that sceptics are more "screwed" if they accept that Appeal to Authority is non-fallacious. Much of scientific progress over the past several centuries has come from people who do not accept "argument from authority" as valid, and who have instead looked for direct evidence.

For example, any "authority" on biology prior to about 2000 would have declared that there were two species of elephants, not one -- that all elephants in Africa were the same species. Not only that, they would (of course) have made the much weaker declaration that all African elephants of whom samples were available were the same species, which avoids the "universal negative" problem.

However, genetic studies done by people who did not accept such authoritative pronouncements by biologists showed that, in fact, the forest elephant (Loxidonta cyclotis) and the savannah elephant (Loxidonta africanis) are "as different as lions are from tigers, or horses are from zebras. Genetically the difference between the two species of elephant is more than half as big as the differences between the African elephant and the Asian elephant, or 58%." (Source (http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/african_forest_elephant.htm))

I could give other examples. How many learned astronomers pronounce that meteorites were impossible? How many learned physicists of the mid-20th century proclaimed that the neutrino had no mass?

There is no statement that an authority can make that is above the possibility of error, and no statement that it is entirely useless to check. Given that my checking resources are finite, I will probably check the statements that I consider most likely to be in error first -- but anyone who is at all suspicious of a statement should be encouraged to check it, no matter how authoritative the author.



We should shut up immediately, because even if we have personally conducted the experiments we cite, by asking people to accept our findings, we are asking them to take it on our own authority, and therefore committing a fallacy by presenting our results.

On the contrary, I very seldom ask my colleagues to accept my findings on my own authority. I will happily cooperate with them in an attempt to replicate my findings and to correct them if necessary. Because, as a practicing scientist and skeptic, I am compelled to recognize that I am not above error and the results I thought I obtained may not be the results I actually got.



Argument from Authority doesn't "make" a statement true.

And that's exactly why it's fallacious, and why if you rely on such a statement without checking it, you are potentially setting yourself up for an error.


To rewind a bit: the claim that arugment from authority is a fallacy and therefore should not be used completely disarms skeptics of all knowledge outside of personal experience.

To counter-rewinde a bit : the claim that argument from authority is not a fallacy and therefore should be used completely disarms skeptics of any ability to make scientific progress, beyond the narrow and error-ridden dogmas of today. We have simply to codify what scientists say today and we will have by definition achieved ultimate truth.



Modern skeptics revolve around the philosophy that supports the scientific method.

Which fundamentally incorporates the idea that a learned scientist, no matter how influential or important, is not necessarily correct and that a single unfunded student can destroy his theory with a single well-placed data point.

Our special skill is the recognition of correct authorities

No, our special skill is the recognition of evidence and the ability to draw supported conclusions from the evidence regardless of what "correct authorities" might be saying about it. The claim of an authority is indeed evidence,.... and possibly the strongest evidence available in a given situation. But it's at best one piece of evidence among many and at worst outright misleading.

I'm sorry, I tried to give you an out upthread by pointing out that the words you were using had meanings, that you were using the words incorrectly, and that there was in fact a well-estaablished set of philosophical terminology to describe the process of drawing rational conclusions from uncertain evidence of varying provenance. Now I have to reach for a larger hammer. "Argument from Authority" is a fallacy, and any claim to the contrary is incompetent, incorrect, and just plain ill-founded.

The simple fact is that almost any fallacy can still be the basis of a "rational" argument in the proper context. Ad hominem arguments, for example, can be a well-founded argument against a person's credibility. Hasty generalization is perfectly legitimate when you have no reasonable expectation of getting more data to generalize from. Correlation may not imply causation, but it's certainly evidence in that direction (we still haven't proven that smoking causes cancer). "Slippery slopes" are often quite rational --- if we have lost increasingly large amounts of money each of the past three years, the "slippery slope" argument that we need to do something or the company will go bankrupt is fallacious, but good business sense.

There is nothing magical about "appeal to authority" that makes it any more legitimate as an argument than any other fallacious-but-rational argument scheme.

[Jeff Corey]

Right, and we are supposed to believe you "Dr" Kitten. Where are the LLLLIIIIINNKKKKZ?



























And those cats that goes"Oh nose?Me undeteterminant."

[delphi_ote]

Has anyone seen a list of logical fallacies that doesn't include Appeal to Authority (or some other name for the same fallacy?) That would surprise me.

[blutoski]

Memes gone wild? Feral memes attacking the proletariat and bourgeoisie?
WTF are you talking about?

The Mikkelsons invented an urban legend out of whole cloth, started spreading it verbally, and attempted to track it. Specifically, they invented the "Sing a Song of Sixpence = Blackbeard's recruitment song" myth. It's still alive today.

The Mikkelsons run the website snopes.com. They eventually came clean, and posted it as 'false'.

Anyway, I'm not going to rehash the our argument. The point was that skeptics ate it up, because it had face validity. Only an expert would have been able to identify the anachronisms that exposed it as invented.

[blutoski]

Has anyone seen a list of logical fallacies that doesn't include Appeal to Authority (or some other name for the same fallacy?) That would surprise me.

Again, I'm clarifying: "Appeal to Authority" may not be a fallacy, but "Appeal to Questionable Authority" (or variant) absolutely is a fallacy.

And yes, that's my point. I have seen lists of logical fallacies that doe not include Appeal to Authority. This is under what's called a list of argument formats instead. Modus Ponens / Affirming the Antecedent (P->Q; P; |- Q) is an argument format. Affirming the Consequent (P->Q; Q; |- P) is a fallacy.

The distinction is not complex, and I cover it early in two courses: Introduction to Critical Thinking, and Introductory Logic, as well as a quick review at the beginning of Philosophy of Science.


When you peruse through the intertubes reviewing the websites that have hits for this term, you will find very quickly that they start to fall apart. This is just an indication that they got the two similar-sounding phenomena mixed up in class, or have forgotten sometime between the exam and sitting down to the keyboard.

It's just human nature, and with skeptics, it's our own little corner of woo. So, just like when you put search terms in for "ghost" and are guaranteed to find 99.999% of the hits endorsing something that doesn't exist, the key phrase "argument from authority" is going to have the same overabundance of erroneous interpretation because its appeal to ordinary human vanity will guarantee disproportionate propagation.

[Wowbagger]

I'm arguing that it's not right, and the reason it's so popular is that somebody with a chip on his shoulder heard that there was a logical fallacy called Argument from Questionable Authority, misunderstood (give him the benefit of the doubt), and started a meme called Argument from Authority to badger skeptics into supporting Libertarian political views.Oh, stop it! I don't think anyone's "Libertarian views" has anything to do with it.

I think it is abundantly clear that just because some authority says something, that does not automatically make it true. Can we at least agree on that?

That is why it is fallacy, by itself. That is why skeptics still use it a such.

Now, perhaps there are parameters we can introduce that phase out the fallaciousness: a strong reputation for being right, or at least intellectually responsible; evidence that the person studied the issue at length (a Ph.D. in something directly related to the issue might suffice); and the person has a professional interest in communicating the most accurate information they can (physicians, for example); etc.

But, it is silly to assume "Argument from Authority" became known as a fallacy, only because some liberatarian misunderstood something, somewhere.

Remember Buzz0's example: It doesn't matter if the person has 3 Ph.D.s and a Nobel Prize. If that person claims you can cure disease by placing a box over your head, you have to call that claim suspicious.

[blutoski]

Which, you will note, is one of the sources I cited.

I said the weakness in Wikipedia was an important motive for creating the Skeptic Wiki. I didn't say Skeptic Wiki was any better.




Anyone with enough training in formal logic -- say, two weeks of it -- to be familiar with the definition fo the word "fallacy."

Your point?



You've cited one yourself -- proof by contradiction. Indeed, most deductive arguments are real-world arguments.

I don't think so. Especially not scientific ones, and that's supposed to be the Skeptics' focus.




That is indeed the format. And it's not at all "valid" -- as you should have learned in that same two weeks of logic. (It's also a deductive format. Didn't you just tell me that no one used AfromA deductively?)

? The word "probably" pretty much eliminates any claim to a deductive format.

Deductive:
P1: If A then B
P2: A
C: Therefore, B.

Inductive:
P1: If A then probably B
P2: A
C: Therefore, probably B.


Both argument formats are valid.




Appeal to consequences. You should know better than that.

It's not an appeal to consequences: it's pointing out that you are inconsistent.




I submit that sceptics are more "screwed" if they accept that Appeal to Authority is non-fallacious. Much of scientific progress over the past several centuries has come from people who do not accept "argument from authority" as valid, and who have instead looked for direct evidence.

I doubt that. I've heard it, and find it difficult to understand how anybody could believe this. They usually bring up Einstein. I point out that many of his thought experiments were based on results he read in publications. He didn't do the experiments himself - he considered the peer-review process sufficient such that he did not have to personally evaluate every experiment ever done. During his undergrad, he did what the rest of us did: he learned facts that had been accumulated over thousands of years of experimentation and distilled into textbooks, which he trusted over, say, pamphlets dropped on the street, because they had gone through a vetting process by the appropriate experts.

The people who bring this forward to my attention also did not do the experiments themselves, never met Einstein, and so on. When I tell them I don't believe them, they point me to references. I ask why these references instead of, say, the 1930s era German anti-Einstein propaganda that says he stole the idea from others. The truth is that my friends can't reconcile their theoretical reasoning method with their authentic reasoning process.

As Johnson said: "I refute it thus."





For example, any "authority" on biology prior to about 2000 would have declared that there were two species of elephants, not one -- that all elephants in Africa were the same species. Not only that, they would (of course) have made the much weaker declaration that all African elephants of whom samples were available were the same species, which avoids the "universal negative" problem.

However, genetic studies done by people who did not accept such authoritative pronouncements by biologists showed that, in fact, the forest elephant (Loxidonta cyclotis) and the savannah elephant (Loxidonta africanis) are "as different as lions are from tigers, or horses are from zebras. Genetically the difference between the two species of elephant is more than half as big as the differences between the African elephant and the Asian elephant, or 58%." (Source (http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/african_forest_elephant.htm))

I could give other examples. How many learned astronomers pronounce that meteorites were impossible? How many learned physicists of the mid-20th century proclaimed that the neutrino had no mass?

There is no statement that an authority can make that is above the possibility of error, and no statement that it is entirely useless to check. Given that my checking resources are finite, I will probably check the statements that I consider most likely to be in error first -- but anyone who is at all suspicious of a statement should be encouraged to check it, no matter how authoritative the author.

Again: strawperson. Argument from authority is inductive, and is not a guarantee of conclusion. But this does not make it a fallacy.





On the contrary, I very seldom ask my colleagues to accept my findings on my own authority. I will happily cooperate with them in an attempt to replicate my findings and to correct them if necessary. Because, as a practicing scientist and skeptic, I am compelled to recognize that I am not above error and the results I thought I obtained may not be the results I actually got.

So, what you're saying is that if I don't personally do every experiment ever conducted, myself, I can't accept that scientists know what they're doing?

That I can only have opinions about experiments I have personally conducted?

I won't live long enough to accept the theory of gravity, much less quantum theory.






And that's exactly why it's fallacious, and why if you rely on such a statement without checking it, you are potentially setting yourself up for an error.

Hm. What does 'checking' look like? I'll give you an example: have you repeated the Benveniste-style homeopathic water experiments? If not: are saying you sincerely don't have an opinion on whether homeopathy works or not?





To counter-rewinde a bit : the claim that argument from authority is not a fallacy and therefore should be used completely disarms skeptics of any ability to make scientific progress, beyond the narrow and error-ridden dogmas of today. We have simply to codify what scientists say today and we will have by definition achieved ultimate truth.

I believe the opposite is true: it frees individual scientists to focus on their current research, without the burden of redoing every experiment in history just to get to the starting point. It allows us to build on the shoulders of giants.

Should a a layperson not accept any medical advice from his doctor - should he suspend opinion and remain agnostic on all medical opinions until completing all historical medical experiments... you see where I'm going with this.

From a pragmatic point of view, as a person who wants to promote the scientific worldview to laypeople... I really don't want to tell them that they shouldn't believe anything the medical community tells them about, say, homeopathy, until they've quit their banking job and spent twenty years repeating experiments themselves. It's absurd.

On the other hand, this is exactly what Creationists do: "Go down to the Grand Canyon and see the evidence of the flood first hand. Build your own flood-mud-sorting apparatus in your basement. Don't take the geologists' word for it."

Or altmed: "Ignore the so-called experts. See if it works for you."





Which fundamentally incorporates the idea that a learned scientist, no matter how influential or important, is not necessarily correct and that a single unfunded student can destroy his theory with a single well-placed data point.

Strawperson. Argument from authority is inductive, and merely states that the authority is probably correct. I haven't heard you actually attempt to refute this yet. You just keep reverting to the deductive form.





No, our special skill is the recognition of evidence and the ability to draw supported conclusions from the evidence regardless of what "correct authorities" might be saying about it. The claim of an authority is indeed evidence,.... and possibly the strongest evidence available in a given situation. But it's at best one piece of evidence among many and at worst outright misleading.

For pretty much everybody, though, the word of an authority is all they have. Sometimes, they have the convergence of independent authorities, and that's even more convincing. Sometimes they have the divergence of authorities, and that's a disqualifier for argument from authority.





The simple fact is that almost any fallacy can still be the basis of a "rational" argument in the proper context. Ad hominem arguments, for example, can be a well-founded argument against a person's credibility. Hasty generalization is perfectly legitimate when you have no reasonable expectation of getting more data to generalize from. Correlation may not imply causation, but it's certainly evidence in that direction (we still haven't proven that smoking causes cancer). "Slippery slopes" are often quite rational --- if we have lost increasingly large amounts of money each of the past three years, the "slippery slope" argument that we need to do something or the company will go bankrupt is fallacious, but good business sense.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you have to realize that when these approaches are used, they are not fallacies, and would not be so named.

Just to the last one: slippery slope. It's only a fallacy when the chain of claims are unlikely to be followed. If the opponent is arguing that A is a bad idea because A leads to B, B leads to C and C is bad, and A truly does lead to B and B truly does lead to C... this isn't a slippery slope fallacy. It's just a sequence of Modus Ponens, which is a valid argument format.

But as soon as the link is broken by a faulty X->Y premise, the whole argument becomes a slippery slope fallacy.





There is nothing magical about "appeal to authority" that makes it any more legitimate as an argument than any other fallacious-but-rational argument scheme.

I still think you're unclear on the distinction between argument formats versus fallacies.

[Thomas]

In short, when we can't get to the truth, we must try to approach the most likely truth with a certain cautiousness.

My academic education (and former hobby) is in philosophy of science as well, and I have yet to disagree with anything blutoski has written (and I as usual, disagree with drkitten).
I have thought many times of making a thread concerning Inductive Skepticism and Evidence, mainly because I think many skeptics are far off the track when their focus is on evidence and testable claims alone. Sure, it's the best we got unless we wanna apply Baysian probability and whatsnot to inductive arguments, and then we're still sort of stranded. But sometimes, just sometimes, you're gonna look like an utter fool if you rely only on evidence. Especially concerning crimes - where every hoodlum knows how to erase or obscure evidence.

I would like your input in such a thread, blutoski. It's a vast and complex topic, but right now, I'm off to a weekend party.

[BPScooter]

There is also the notion that some PhD programs are stronger than others, at any given time, for any given field. "Strength" being amorphous. Reputation of faculty vs. actual availability or interest of faculty in nurturing doctoral students vs. just recruiting them. Choose your program wisely, grasshoppers, if you want to get a Ph.D. in the social sciences and humanities! On the plus side, when you do, you will find amazing support for your independence and novel thinking.

[drkitten]

So, what you're saying is that if I don't personally do every experiment ever conducted, myself, I can't accept that scientists know what they're doing?

I am not. You can provisionally accept whatever the hell you like, on the basis of whatever standards of evidence you like. But some of what you accept may be wrong.



Strawperson. Argument from authority is inductive, and merely states that the authority is probably correct.

Which is another way to say that it may be wong and is therefore fallacious, and if you want more confidence than the simple say-so of an authority, you should do further checking.

And, yes, I do get second opinions when I have a substantial medical problem. Indeed, my insurance company insists upon this, precisely because it wants more confidence in the necessity of the procedure it will be paying for.


For pretty much everybody, though, the word of an authority is all they have. Sometimes, they have the convergence of independent authorities, and that's even more convincing.

How can it be? If Argument from Authority is not a fallacy, then by definition it is never wrong? How can something be "more convincing" than perfection itself>?


I hear what you're saying, but I think you have to realize that when these approaches are used, they are not fallacies, and would not be so named.

On the contrary. They are explicitly fallacious, are named as such by any competent practitioners, but are still considered rational arguments.


I still think you're unclear on the distinction between argument formats versus fallacies.

On the contrary. I think you're unclear on the meaning of the word "fallacy."

From the OED: "fallacy : 3. a. A deceptive or misleading argument, a sophism. In Logic esp. a flaw, material or formal, which vitiates a syllogism; " (See also "vitiate : 1. trans. To render incomplete, imperfect, or faulty; to impair or spoil.")

Is "argument from authority" "perfect"? Can it "mislead"? Can it be "flawed"? Can it contain "faults"? If so, it is a "fallacy."

By contrast, a valid argument is by definition flaw-free; if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.

You wrote earlier: "Argument from authority is inductive, and is not a guarantee of conclusion. But this does not make it a fallacy."

It does make it a fallacy. That's what the word means -- a fallacious argument is an argument that is not a guarantee of conclusion. You might as well write "A Honda Civic is a car. But this does not make it an automobile." I'm sorry, but since the word "fallacy" is a synonym for "argument that is not a guarantee of correctness," you have no basis for that assertion.

In fact, there's another well-known fallacy that you are coming perilously close to -- the Fallacist's Fallacy, which is to reject the conclusion because the argument used to reach it is fallacious. (For example, you wrote ""Appeal to Authority" may not be a fallacy, but "Appeal to Questionable Authority" (or variant) absolutely is a fallacy. Bullfrog! There is no such concept as "absolutely a fallacy"; appeal to questionable authority can still be a rational argument in some circumstances, such as when genuine authority is unreachable or does not exist and the person being cited still has a comparative advantage over the questioner.) That a fallacious argument was used to reach the conclusion does not, by itself, justify a priori rejection of the conclusions.

Again, the courts have dealt with this problem for centuries by distinguishing between truth and credibility. An "expert" (read, "authority") has greater credibility in direct proportion to his/her relevant expertise. In the absence of competing evidence or testimony, an expert's statement will often be relied upon. But it is not necessarily true, and it is perfectly legitimate to attack the expert's credibiilty on many grounds, including lack of actual expertise ("Questionable authority"), or any of several other approaches, such as a lack of independence of the authority -- "How much did the defendant pay you to testify here?." This is technicallly another fallacy[("Argumentam ad hominem (circumstantial)], but it's quite rational,... and effective.

The problem with the approach you describe is precisely that it is so woo-friendly. Look at what Thomas wrote: "But sometimes, just sometimes, you're gonna look like an utter fool if you rely only on evidence. Especially concerning crimes - where every hoodlum knows how to erase or obscure evidence." Somehow we're supposed to solve crimes and convict criminals using something other than evidence? The "expert" judgement of the police that "He dunnit" is supposed to be substituted for reason, testing, and evidence?

There are, in fact, a number of people who claim to be able to solve crimes without evidence. They're called "psychics," and often "frauds" and "charlatans." But because someone recognizes them as experts, all of a sudden one is supposed to regard their testimony as useful, accurate, and helpful?

Indeed, this is precisely the approach to evidence that the (US) Federal courts have been getting away from. The "old" rules of evidence (pre-about 1990) were based on a case named Frye, where "expert evidence" was deemed admissible if-and-only-if it was supported by general acceptance in the relevant community of experts. Since everyone accepted lie detector tests, for example, they were admissible -- even if they didn't work well at all (as we know know). The new standards (cf Daubert) explicitly eschew this test, and instead apply an empiricall-based standard. The credentials of the expert (and general community acceptance) are still relevant as a factor to consider, but much more important is the question of whether the techniques proposed actually work as claimed. Have they been tested? Is the error rate known? Is the error rate acceptably low? What are the potential confounding factors, and can they be adequately controlled for in the case instant?

And almost none of these can be established on the basis of "authority." Precisely because the courts recognize that "expertise," even the collected expertise of an entire field, is not a sufficiently reliable guide to The Truth.

Basically, you're going through sixty-or-so years of epistemological development in reverse..

[blutoski]

Basically, you're going through sixty-or-so years of epistemological development in reverse..

?

I think you're confused. I don't know what more to do.

Anyway, for those who are actually interested... Every argument format can lead to an incorrect conclusion, if one of the premises is false. This doesn't make every argument a fallacy.

Let's look at Modus Ponens:
P1: A->B ("if a then b")
P2: A
C: therefore, B.

Now, if A is actually false, then the conclusion is wrong. That doesn't make the argument a special fallacy.

However, some argument formats can never be true. They're called invalid argument formats. Affirming the Consequent is an example of an invalid argument format.

P1: A->B
P2: B
C: therefore, A.

It's such a common reasoning error, that it has been added to a list of logical fallacies, has a well-established "name", and everything.

Let's join some Modus Ponens:

P1: A->B
P2: B->C
P3: A
C: therefore, B.
C: therefore, C.

What would happen if we discovered that P2 was false? That B->C was not true? Then this argument - as valid as it is - leads to a false conclusion. This is pretty common, and when this happens, the valid argument format of linking Modus Ponens becomes "slippery slope fallacy". But you had to find the false premise first, before you could label it a fallacy.

By the same token, Argument from Authority is an argument format, and * when one of the premises is proven incorrect *, the argument is fallacious. The name of this fallacy varies (see previous posts). For example, when the person cited is not a recognized authority in the field, I prefer the label "Argument from Questionable Authority."

The reason this one is tricky is that Argument from Authority has something called "hidden premises". The person making the argument is not explicitly stating them, but they need to be implied as part of the argument analysis. They are basically the list I made in a previous post:

Basically, IF...
1. the authority has sufficient knowledge of the subject matter
2. the field of study exists
3. the field of study's community recognizes the authority as such
4. there is adequate agreement within the field
5. the authority is not excessively biased
6. the authority is identified
...then, the authority's statement within the subject matter is probably true.

These are all hidden premises in an argument format called Argument from Authority. If any of the premises are false, then the argument weakens, and there's grounds to call it fallacious.

So, if I discover that my opponent is citing an authority who is excessively biased, I could accuse them of trying to make the logical fallacy of Argument from Questionable Authority.

By the same token, my pointing out that the authority is biased is not an ad hominem attack or poisoning the well - it's addressing a specific claim that my opponent is making. It's addressing a premise in my opponent's argument. It's not fallacious, and shouldn't be labelled as such.


Also: I had a brain fart earlier. The format of Argument from Authority is equally valid in inductive and deductive variants. An example from my own experience was when a friend got banned from one of our local bars for fighting.

Owner: "You can't come in here. You're not allowed anymore."
Him: "Who says?"
Owner: "Me. I'm the owner."
Him: "Oh, what do you know."

The point is that sometimes you can have deductive certainty from an argument from authority. Especially if the authority is granted the freedom to define rules, the rules' truth value is quite proven by asking the authority.

[quixotecoyote]

However, some argument formats can never be true. They're called invalid argument formats. Affirming the Consequent is an example of an invalid argument format.

Here's your problem. It's not when they can never be true, it's when they are not always true. When given true premises and the argument does not always lead to a correct conclusion, the argument is invalid.

Person A is an authority
Person A says X
Therefore X is true.

This may or may not be true even granting the premises, thus it is invalid/fallacious.

The definition has been cited earlier, so scroll up if you need to refresh your memory.

[blutoski]

Here's your problem. It's not when they can never be true, it's when they are not always true. When given true premises and the argument does not always lead to a correct conclusion, the argument is invalid.

Person A is an authority
Person A says X
Therefore X is true.

This may or may not be true even granting the premises, thus it is invalid/fallacious.

The definition has been cited earlier, so scroll up if you need to refresh your memory.

The definition of what? A fallacy is an argument that produces a false conclusion. There are two kinds: invalid syllogisms, and common errors drawn from valid argument formats. (that's why the list of fallacies is potentially infinite - we just name the 'common' errors).

A "valid argument format" produces true conclusions when the premises are true. Argument from Authority is a valid argument format, because it produces true conclusions when the premises are true.




Your example is actually called a "nonsequitur," not "Argument from Authority". Consider:

Person A is an albatross
Person A says X
Therefore X is true

I think the key error in this thread is that this argument has an implied premise:

HP: If a person is an authority, everything they say is true.

That's not an argument: it's a statement. It's a totally false statement, but it's not a fallacious argument or a logical fallacy.

Again: I agree that it's a false statement.

But when I'm making the following argument:

P1: Dr. Conway is a valid authority on AIDS epidemiology (criteria)
P2: Dr. Conway says that HIV causes AIDS
(P3: If a person is a valid authority, then what they say is probably true)
C: therefore, HIV probably causes AIDS

There's no "fallacy" here.

[blutoski]

I think the key error in this thread is that this argument has an implied premise.

I just want to point out that one of the difficult challenges in argument analysis is to identify and lay out hidden premises in the opponent's argument.

Whenever you see a nonsequitur like that, you have to probe a bit and see whether the statements might actually be connected through a chain of reasoning, and lay out that pattern.

It's a skill that requires practice. It's not enough to just understand it in principle.

[Wowbagger]

P1: Dr. Conway is a valid authority on AIDS epidemiology (criteria)
P2: Dr. Conway says that HIV causes AIDS
(P3: If a person is a valid authority, then what they say is probably true)
C: therefore, HIV probably causes AIDS

There's no "fallacy" here.
The word "probably" helps. But, scientists should not be afraid to verify that information, independantly. Dr. Conway could be wrong, perhaps by innocent mistake.

Of course, your specific example is hard to demonstrate this: HIV has been verified as the cause of AIDS many times over.
But, suppose she stated that "AIDS could be cured quickly and effectively by directly attacking specific aspects of HIV plasmids". Then, it is clear that other scientists should double-check that, before advertising the new miracle treatment.

[blutoski]

In short, when we can't get to the truth, we must try to approach the most likely truth with a certain cautiousness.

My academic education (and former hobby) is in philosophy of science as well, and I have yet to disagree with anything blutoski has written (and I as usual, disagree with drkitten).
I have thought many times of making a thread concerning Inductive Skepticism and Evidence, mainly because I think many skeptics are far off the track when their focus is on evidence and testable claims alone. Sure, it's the best we got unless we wanna apply Baysian probability and whatsnot to inductive arguments, and then we're still sort of stranded. But sometimes, just sometimes, you're gonna look like an utter fool if you rely only on evidence. Especially concerning crimes - where every hoodlum knows how to erase or obscure evidence.

Or plant evidence.

I would like your input in such a thread, blutoski. It's a vast and complex topic, but right now, I'm off to a weekend party.

I'm not clear on what you want to do in the thread. Are you trying to develop a FAQ on the subject, and need to get a grasp of common questions?

What I've done to try to address the shortfall is develop a critical thinking tutorial on the BCSkeptics' website. It hasn't really been updated as much as it deserves. I think it was last updated around 1997. (It was on a BBS since the 1980s before that good ol' WWW materialized.)

What I haven't done is extend it to include components for the philosophy of science, and symbolic logic. But I have added exercises so visitors can practice identifying fallacies from a list of example arguments (Some of the arguments do not have fallacies - this is because after exposure to critical thinking, some people erroneously see fallacies everywhere. Sort of like doctors in second year med who become hypochondriacs.)


I'd also like to address the another 'big' skeptical urban myth:

* you can't prove a negative

(not trying to wreck the thread... just thinking out loud)

[quixotecoyote]

The definition of what? A fallacy is an argument that produces a false conclusion. There are two kinds: invalid syllogisms, and common errors drawn from valid argument formats. (that's why the list of fallacies is potentially infinite - we just name the 'common' errors).

No, a fallacy is an invalid argument. An argument that does not always produce a correct conclusion from true premises. It is a mistake of reasoning.

example:

The classic example of a deductively valid argument is:
(1) All men are mortal.
(2) Socrates is a man.
Therefore:
(3) Socrates is mortal.
It is simply not possible that both (1) and (2) are true and (3) is false, so this argument is deductively valid.
Any deductive argument that fails to meet this (very high) standard commits a logical error, and so, technically, is fallacious. This includes many arguments that we would usually accept as good arguments, arguments that make their conclusions highly probable, but not certain. Arguments of this kind, arguments that aren’t deductively valid, are said to commit a “formal fallacy”.





A "valid argument format" produces true conclusions when the premises are true. Argument from Authority is a valid argument format, because it produces true conclusions when the premises are true.No it does not. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't because of the hidden premise you find next, which is the core of an argument from authority.




Your example is actually called a "nonsequitur," not "Argument from Authority". Consider:

Person A is an albatross
Person A says X
Therefore X is true
That would be 'argument form albatross' I suppose. It's identical in form to argument from authority.


I think the key error in this thread is that this argument has an implied premise:

HP: If a person is an authority, everything they say is true.

That's not an argument: it's a statement. It's a totally false statement, but it's not a fallacious argument or a logical fallacy.This is a false premise implicit in fallacious arguments from authority.


But when I'm making the following argument:

P1: Dr. Conway is a valid authority on AIDS epidemiology (criteria)
P2: Dr. Conway says that HIV causes AIDS
(P3: If a person is a valid authority, then what they say is probably true)
C: therefore, HIV probably causes AIDS
There's no "fallacy" here.If you phrase it like that, it is (arguably) not fallacious, but simply weak as you are drawing on an unconventional probabilistic syllogism.

Appeal to Authority has yet to be construed as a probabilistic syllogism in this thread or in any cites by anyone except yourself, so you're not gaining any ground here

[blutoski]

The word "probably" helps. But, scientists should not be afraid to verify that information, independantly. Dr. Conway could be wrong, perhaps by innocent mistake.

Of course, your specific example is hard to demonstrate this: HIV has been verified as the cause of AIDS many times over.
But, suppose she stated that "AIDS could be cured quickly and effectively by directly attacking specific aspects of HIV plasmids". Then, it is clear that other scientists should double-check that, before advertising the new miracle treatment.

I think we're recycling the discussion, here. The point is that it's not a fallacious argument format, since if the premises are correct, then the conclusion is correct: "therefore HIV probably causes AIDS".

Unfortunately, the conclusion is still correct, even if it turns out that HIV doesn't caus AIDS, because the conclusion included the contingency for being wrong in the word 'probably'.

It's not weasel-words to have 'probably' as a conclusion, it's just induction, and science.

[quixotecoyote]

But since their premises are probability laws, the most rigorous evaluation of
testimony can lead to the incorrect conclusion in any single case.

...

There is no need for probabilistic syllogisms which might lead to incorrect conclusions even when most rigorously applied.Four Types of Inference from Documents to Events
Vernon K. Dibble
History and Theory, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1963), pp. 203-221
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2656%281963%293%3A2%3C203%3AFTOIFD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X

Discussing (among other things) the problems and weaknesses of probabilistic syllogisms.

In short, blutoski, you are defending something that isn't being questioned because the sites you are complaining about are not talking about probabilistic heuristics. Everyone else is talking about arguments that say 'is or is not' your are talking about 'may or may not be' which doesn't measure up to the same standards of logic and argumentation and can legitimately said to be fallacious, although there is some scholarly dissension that it should simply be labeled weak.

eta:Browsing through some scientific philosophy journals, I note probabilistic syllogisms were advanced as a valid method fairly recently, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, but were careful to stress their limitations. I'm not sure how widely that view is accepted.

[quixotecoyote]

I think we're recycling the discussion, here. The point is that it's not a fallacious argument format, since if the premises are correct, then the conclusion is correct: "therefore HIV probably causes AIDS".

Unfortunately, the conclusion is still correct, even if it turns out that HIV doesn't caus AIDS, because the conclusion included the contingency for being wrong in the word 'probably'.

It's not weasel-words to have 'probably' as a conclusion, it's just induction, and science.

This is one of the problems you run into in trying to justify probabilistic syllogisms, they are temporally dependent.

Your reasoning is only valid before the truth is known. If we learn that HIV doesn't cause AIDs then the probability of causing AIDS drops to 0 and your conclusion is then false.

[delphi_ote]

I have seen lists of logical fallacies that doe not include Appeal to Authority.
I have seen ghosts and aliens.

[Wowbagger]

Unfortunately, the conclusion is still correct, even if it turns out that HIV doesn't caus AIDS, because the conclusion included the contingency for being wrong in the word 'probably'.

It's not weasel-words to have 'probably' as a conclusion, it's just induction, and science.I agree, that is why I stated the word "probably" helps.
All of science boils down to "probably".

(Yes, we do seem to be recycling the discussion. So, I won't press the point further. We stated our views, now it is time to let the readers decide.)



------------------------------------
Back to the main topic: I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the idea of revoking one's Ph.D. I don't think this happens, at least not at any time I am aware of. But...

If one is so irresponsible in how they promote ideas, after obtaining a Ph.D., should there be a system in place, where a comittee could judge if the person's Ph.D. status should be revoked?

Just wondering.

[delphi_ote]

If one is so irresponsible in how they promote ideas, after obtaining a Ph.D., should there be a system in place, where a comittee could judge if the person's Ph.D. status should be revoked?

Just wondering.
Interesting thought. I don't think there should be such a committee. It could be used for political purposes too easily. What if the panel revoked someone's PhD for conducting unpopular research or research they didn't agree with? This is the heart of academic freedom. You are free to pursue whatever research and promote whatever ideas you like as a peer of other experts. If you never manage to prove anything, your reputation will suffer, but you are still an expert in that subject.

Also, you're taking away a title someone earned. Their hard work is on file for everyone to read. You can't make their thesis disappear. Researchers and humanity at large will continue to benefit from it. It seems unfair to take away a title of respect while still reaping the rewards of the labor that went into earning that title.

Buzz Aldrin is still an astronaut, even if he never goes into space again. Even if he tells everyone it was made of cheese. Behe is still an expert in biochemistry, even if he misrepresents evolution.

[digithead]

If someone is going to have their Ph.D. revoked it should depend on what the person did to merit revocation of their degree...

We had a someone graduate from our program with a Ph.D. recently. Unfortunately from him, another Ph.D. student working on the same subject discovered that his analysis was not just flawed but also completely violated the assumptions necessary for the methods he chose for his dissertation. The analysis was simply wrong, ergo his conclusions were wrong. Should he have his Ph.D. revoked? I don't think so because his chair and committee were just as responsible for the error because they completely missed it. But given that it's a small world, word gets around and he is having a hard time getting a tenure track position...

However, if someone fabricates data, plagiarizes, or engages in scientific misconduct for their dissertation and it is discovered after the degree is awarded, I think they should have their degree revoked...

Wasn't there recently a case in physics with a guy who was discovered to have doctored data and had his Ph.D. revoked?

[quixotecoyote]

There such a system in place already. A graduate of my university was discovered with a doctoral thesis on native Hawaiian culture largely plagiarized from a relatively obscure piece of literature. YANK went the doctorate and he was fired from the (I think New York) university he was teaching at.

[delphi_ote]

There such a system in place already. A graduate of my university was discovered with a doctoral thesis on native Hawaiian culture largely plagiarized from a relatively obscure piece of literature. YANK went the doctorate and he was fired from the (I think New York) university he was teaching at.
Wowbagger was asking about revoking a person's PhD for their actions after they earned it. That kind of system is definitely not in place.

[quixotecoyote]

Wowbagger was asking about revoking a person's PhD for their actions after they earned it. That kind of system is definitely not in place.

So was I.

You could have tried a google search.

http://media.www.iowastatedaily.com/media/storage/paper818/news/1995/09/14/UndefinedSection/Hearing.That.May.Revoke.Ph.d.Begins-1069340.shtml
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/8224/8224physicist.html

[delphi_ote]

So was I.
That was not at all obvious from your previous post. Plagiarizing a dissertation would be fraudulently earning the title.
You could have tried a google search.
And you could try being less childish. Or, if you're going to be rude, you could at least try to be more creative.
http://media.www.iowastatedaily.com/media/storage/paper818/news/1995/09/14/UndefinedSection/Hearing.That.May.Revoke.Ph.d.Begins-1069340.shtml
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/8224/8224physicist.html
The first story... "Judith Graham... is being charged by university officials with plagiarizing parts of a dissertation..." is also about actions in the course of earning the PhD. There's a big difference.

The second is very interesting and highly relevant. The German education systems is very different than the American system, though. This isn't anything I've ever heard of happening in the U.S.

[quixotecoyote]

While I am occasionally rude, it has not been by intent to be rude here.

The process for revoking phd's exists. The most common reason is plagiarism in the course of earning the doctorate, but the process itself does exist. Germany is considerably more trigger happy in my estimation.

[blutoski]

This is one of the problems you run into in trying to justify probabilistic syllogisms, they are temporally dependent.

Your reasoning is only valid before the truth is known. If we learn that HIV doesn't cause AIDs then the probability of causing AIDS drops to 0 and your conclusion is then false.

I'm saying that the best working definition of "we learn that HIV doesn't cause AIDS" looks like recognized authorities coming to such a consensus. Otherwise, we don't actually know whether Einstein was right or not, do we?

We (I'm an immunologist) don't really know what's actually true. What happens is that the consensus changes. That's Kuhn's contribution, and while it sounds postmodern, don't be dissuaded by the resemblance. Rejecting authority is much more aligned with postmodernism: "Ignore what the AMA says about this drug. If works for you, then that's the reality."



I came up with the same contradictory message when having a discussion with a Creationist. The Creationist was saying that the dating and identification techniques we use are very questionable, and highly vulnerable to opinion. Basically, that if scientists start analyzing a fossil believing it's fifteen million years old, but find results that show it was made yesterday, they discard the results and do a different test, and another and another, until they get the results they want.

His example was Piltdown Man, which he says went undetected as a forgery for almost fifty years. My reply was that if scientific dating techniques are truly as unreliable as he says, then we don't really know that Piltdown remains are fakes, so he has to stop using it as an example, and just say that any fossil could be either real or faked. I think he eventually grasped that there was a fundamental contradiction in saying that there's no way to tell whether something's a forgery or not *and* saying that we have an example of a known forgery.

By the same token, how do we know when somebody like Einstein is truly overturning old paradigms that the authorities were defending without justification? As a layperson with an immunology degree, I have absolutely no qualifications to evaluate these complex equations, have no access to the testing environments that his colleagues used to confirm his predictions, and have insufficient lifetime remaining to reproduce these experiments, much less the prior experiments that also confirmed the relativistic model (I'm thinking specifically of the aether experiments, which had been completed before Einstein was even born. He didn't feel the need to reproduce them, took them on authority... why shouldn't I?)


The point is that it follows from your argument that we don't really know whether this whole "special relativity" thing is true or not. I have never met a skeptic who has personally reproduced the experimental findings and scientific consensuses (consenses?) that we defend. What we do is provide citations. I don't think that's... what was the word drkitten used... "incompetent."

I think that propagating this urban myth of a fallacy leads to confusion, sends a conflicting message, appears to be hypocricy to our critics and neutral viewers, and in general makes explaining a skeptical view very difficult. It ends up sounding like solipsism.

While solipsism is considered a subtype of skepticism (I actually agree with this taxonomy), its failure as a practical worldview was clear around 400BC, and very few skeptics preserved the tradition.

Today, in modern skepticism, we have a worldview that is very contemporary - the scientific method (if there is such a thing). This has provided a different philosophical underpinning for modern skeptics. Such that "modern skepticism" is more or less synonymous with the scientific worldview (I appreciate that modern skepticism is a wide umbrella, and does include people whose sketpical subjects are not scientifically verifiable).

In any case, my assertion remains that Argument from Authority is a valid argument format that does lead to false conclusions when one of the premises is false. This situation is a fallacy with names like "Argument from Questionable Authority" and so on.

Also: the individual statement/claim: "Authorities are always right when they make a statement within their scope of competence" is false. But that statement is not an argument, is not the "Argument from Authority," should not be mislabelled as such, as it merely leads to the complications above.

[blutoski]

I have seen ghosts and aliens.

So, what you're saying then, is that as far as you're concerned, ghosts and aliens exist?

[delphi_ote]

So, what you're saying then, is that as far as you're concerned, ghosts and aliens exist?
Are you rejecting my claim?! Just because I didn't back it up with evidence?! How dare you!!!

[blutoski]

Appeal to Authority has yet to be construed as a probabilistic syllogism in this thread or in any cites by anyone except yourself, so you're not gaining any ground here

Again, the contradiction. You consider appeal to authority 'incompetence', but will not accept my argument unless I supply citations.

Akward.

Here's an example of a textbook citation: Critical Thinking: An introduction to the basic skills, 3rd ed. William Hughes. The 4th edition is now available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Introduction-Basic-Skills/dp/1551115735).

Argument from Authority comes up in two sections. The first is on page 158, which is the section on fallacies.

Appeal to authority is commonly mistaken for a fallacy. However, what has usually been brought to attention is in fact an Irrelevant Appeal to Authority, or an Appeal to a Questionable Authority. Our lives would be intolerable if we were to reject appeals to authorities. The reason we consult mechanics, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers, and scientists is that we have to rely upon their advice on matters about which we cannot possibly obtain direct knowledge.

There are a few subjects which do not benefit from argument from authority, such as disproofs through identifying contradictions, or issues we can resolve through direct experience. For example, if we are told that a book is offensive, we can judge this for ourselves. If we are told the speed of light is constant, we must rely on argument from authority.

This author has a system called RAS that I use, he's also what I call a fallacy 'lumper', so he puts these two fallacies into the "Irrelevant reasoning" category of fallacies. Irrelevant appeal to authority is when the authority is not really an authority in this scope. eg: Einstein's opinion about God, or Tom Cruise's opinion about psychopharmaceutics.

The second is Appeal to Questionable Authority, which is more applicable when the authority has qualifications in the relevant field, but is perhaps caught up in a conflict of interest, or not actually identified. eg: Dr. Wakefield in the UK, who published research on MMR vaccine side effects, but neglected to report that he was getting bucketloads of cash from the personal injury lawyers who were starting a class-action suit for the parents of children with autism.

[blutoski]

Are you rejecting my claim?! Just because I didn't back it up with evidence?! How dare you!!!

I'm asking if you think ghosts exist. Humour me.

[quixotecoyote]

Also: the individual statement/claim: "Authorities are always right when they make a statement within their scope of competence" is false. But that statement is not an argument, is not the "Argument from Authority," should not be mislabelled as such, as it merely leads to the complications above.

That is an accurate restatement of the argument from authority. I don't know why you think otherwise. I wasn't able to glean the point you were making with the AIDS and Plitdown Man stories. It didn't seem at all related to what we were talking about.

[blutoski]

That is an accurate restatement of the argument from authority. I don't know why you think otherwise.

I know otherwise, and I have explained several times above. That's not an 'argument' at all - it's a statement or claim.

There is an argument called Argument from Authority, and that's not it. I provided its form, hidden premises, and supported this with a citation from what is probably the most used "Introduction to Critical Thinking" textbook in the English language, hoping that will satisfy those on the forum who have not already closed their minds to actually learning about critical thinking.




I wasn't able to glean the point you were making with the AIDS and Plitdown Man stories. It didn't seem at all related to what we were talking about.

The Piltdown conversation was an example of somebody whose argument contained a contradiction, and so I cannot accept it.

drkitten tells me he that citing authorities is 'incompetent' in one part of this discussion, then tells me he won't buy my argument because he has more citations from authorities than I do. The argument contains a contradiction, and I cannot accept it.

[blutoski]

Are you rejecting my claim?! Just because I didn't back it up with evidence?! How dare you!!!

And: I'm not rejecting your claim. Your claim is that you 'saw' ghosts. That's testimony. There is no more evidence required than what you have already provided.

My impression is that you were implying something about whether they existed or not, and I don't know how to address the discussion until you follow up a bit on whether you meant anything more, or if you were going somewhere with that thought.

[delphi_ote]

And: I'm not rejecting your claim. Your claim is that you 'saw' ghosts. That's testimony. There is no more evidence required than what you have already provided.

My impression is that you were implying something about whether they existed or not, and I don't know how to address the discussion until you follow up a bit on whether you meant anything more, or if you were going somewhere with that thought.

:bwall

[blutoski]

:bwall

I need more than that. You said you saw ghosts. OK: as mentioned above, I am not rejecting your claim. What was your point?

I'm wiling to answer your questions. Why have you not answered mine?

[quixotecoyote]

I know otherwise, and I have explained several times above. That's not an 'argument' at all - it's a statement or claim.

There is an argument called Argument from Authority, and that's not it. I provided its form, hidden premises, and supported this with a citation from what is probably the most used "Introduction to Critical Thinking" textbook in the English language, hoping that will satisfy those on the forum who have not already closed their minds to actually learning about critical thinking.


Several alternative sources have been cited in context which show the correct definition. Until you choose to accept them, I am leaving this thread of the conversation.

[drkitten]

The definition of what? A fallacy is an argument that produces a false conclusion. There are two kinds: invalid syllogisms, and common errors drawn from valid argument formats. (that's why the list of fallacies is potentially infinite - we just name the 'common' errors).

Boy, you just get worse and worse. Almost no argument always produces a false conclusion; here's an example of complete gibberish in which the conclusion is nevertheless true:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Therefore, 6 is half of a dozen.

And here's an argument from invalid authority in which the conclusion is nevertheless true.

My aunt May said that the Steelers would win last Monday
The Steelers won last Monday



A "valid argument format" produces true conclusions when the premises are true. Argument from Authority is a valid argument format, because it produces true conclusions when the premises are true.

It does not.

Bill Gates said that 1 MB of memory should be enough for anyone.
Bill Gates was a recognized authority
... but was still wrong.




But when I'm making the following argument:

P1: Dr. Conway is a valid authority on AIDS epidemiology (criteria)
P2: Dr. Conway says that HIV causes AIDS
(P3: If a person is a valid authority, then what they say is probably true)
C: therefore, HIV probably causes AIDS

There's no "fallacy" here.

Yes, there is. Because just because Dr. Conway is a valid authority doesn't even mean that his statement is "probably true." In fact, when we're dealing with empirical matters, there's not even such a thing as "probably true." Either AIDS is caused by HIV (in which case Dr. Conway is simply correct), or it isn't, in which case he's wrong despite his expertise and authority.

And because he could still be wrong, it is a fallacy.

[Wowbagger]

Regarding revoking of Ph.Ds.: I concur that if the docurate, itself, was acquired through fraud (plagarism, massasing data, etc.), then yes, it should be revoked.
I understand the concerns for revoking it for other reasons (political nonsense, an what-not). But, I'm wondering if someone could make a case that the person is no longer an expert in a field, due to a reputation for irresponsability in the field: They ought to be punished, somehow. That would help motivate Ph.Ds. from being intellectually irresponsible.

Regarding the continued discussion of Arg. from Auth: Perhaps it is time to give it a break. I see why everyone's points are valid, in their own way, including blutoski. I gather one person thinks the other is wrong, becasue they are coming from a different school of thought, where these words mean different things, to different folks. And, such like that.

I think we all agree that Argument from Questionable Authority is a fallacy. But, I also hope we can agree that Argument from Authority is a valid abbreviation, in certain contexts.

[drkitten]

Back to the main topic: I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the idea of revoking one's Ph.D. I don't think this happens, at least not at any time I am aware of. But...

If one is so irresponsible in how they promote ideas, after obtaining a Ph.D., should there be a system in place, where a comittee could judge if the person's Ph.D. status should be revoked?

Just wondering.

My understanding is that such a system is routinely in place in the German educational system; there are a number of hoops that you need to jump through after defending (and being officially "granted") the Ph.D. or else they revoke it -- the most substantial being publishing the Ph.D. as a research article or monograph or something.

This, of course, isn't a "responsibility" requirement as much as a continuing practice requirement (which is also routine for many other professions such as medical licensing). And it has a time limit -- five years or so post defense, they will no longer pull your degree even if you turn into a complete froot loop.

Perhaps one of our German members could comment in more detail?

[quixotecoyote]

At some point, Wowbagger, you and I need to have a thread on the limits of descriptivism.

[blutoski]

Several alternative sources have been cited in context which show the correct definition. Until you choose to accept them, I am leaving this thread of the conversation.

Again, though, I think this exposes my point about the internally-inconsistent nature of the claim. You're 'proving' that argument from authority is invalid, but also saying I'm wrong because I'm ignoring your authorities. My citation was rejected, presumably, because you don't recognize it authority as superior to the ones you accepted. I'm not sure what criteria you used.

My argument was not that it was "not cited on the web as a fallacy." Just the opposite: that it is widely and erroneously cited on the web as a fallacy, while this is not actually the view of philosophers: that there are criteria that need to fail before considering it a fallacy. I provided a supporting citation from what is probably the most commonly-used textbook in the field of critical thinking. So, when I go through the checklist in regard to the citation I provided, I was deliberately considering the validity of its use. I can assure you that philosophers do not consider the Skeptic Wiki to be a reliable resource for a list of fallacies.






Further, a review of many of the citations drkitten provided reinforces my claim that there are criteria that need to fail before we are looking at a fallacy at all.




I've had some conversations with different authors of these websites, and very few are actually philosophy majors, and some have actually never taken a course in critical thinking. They are getting their information from other websites, blogs, popular nonfiction books, &c. Very few are willing to make changes, and that's part of the problem.

A good example is the fallacyfiles.org. He used to call the fallacy "Argument from Authority," but renamed it on the site, after taking a course in critical thinking. The links are still out of date, but when you go to the page, he has it relabelled as "Appeal to Misleading Authority." He has left "Argument from Authority" in as an "alias", but has updated the content to include the qualifying criteria. He's still not quite grasping the concept of the distinction between argument formats versus common fallacies.

[drkitten]

drkitten tells me he that citing authorities is 'incompetent' in one part of this discussion, then tells me he won't buy my argument because he has more citations from authorities than I do.

No, I tell you that I won't buy your argument because your argument is demonstrably incorrect -- and can be demonstrated by the existence of a counterexample. (The "forest elephant" is one such counterexample.)

If the non-existence of the forest elephant is "provable" by argument from authority (which it was, until 2000), despite empirical evidence that the forest elephant actually existed in 2000 (which exists), then the proof method is flawed.

It really is as simple as that, I'm afraid.

[quixotecoyote]

blutoski:
Your contradiction argument is absurd. We're talking about the meaning of words. The fast that drkitten was able to pull out a half dozen or so sources to back up her claim is not an appeal to authority, it is evidence of usage.

Argument to authority means a certain thing. It means something different than what you claim. That is demonstrated by citing its usage.

[blutoski]

Boy, you just get worse and worse. Almost no argument always produces a false conclusion; here's an example of complete gibberish in which the conclusion is nevertheless true:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Therefore, 6 is half of a dozen.

Actually, there's a missing premise that is false:

P3: If roses are red and violets are blue, then 6 is half of a dozen.

False premise leads to false conclusion. It's Modus Ponens, which is a legitemate argument format.






And here's an argument from invalid authority in which the conclusion is nevertheless true.

My aunt May said that the Steelers would win last Monday
The Steelers won last Monday

I don't see an argument there. What's the proposition?






It does not.

Bill Gates said that 1 MB of memory should be enough for anyone.
Bill Gates was a recognized authority
... but was still wrong.

Bad example, though. It's alleged that he said 640k, and it's an urban legend. But that's also part of my overall claim: that skeptics are vulnerable to accepting and propagating urban legends. We can almost never actually personally verify claims (you would have to build a time machine) and the issue unfortunately degenerates into arguments over who is the appropriate authority.

Nevertheless, there's no conclusion to your argument above, so I don't know whether the claim is true or not. If you used the Appeal to Authority format - and giving you the benefit of the urban legend's truth - then the conclusion would be "Therefore, 640k should be enough for anybody [for all time]."

So, who knows if this is 'correct' in the sense that we'd have to know what was 'probably' the case.

I can say that if you roll a die, you probably won't get a six. If you get a six, I wasn't 'wrong'.








Yes, there is. Because just because Dr. Conway is a valid authority doesn't even mean that his statement is "probably true." In fact, when we're dealing with empirical matters, there's not even such a thing as "probably true." Either AIDS is caused by HIV (in which case Dr. Conway is simply correct), or it isn't, in which case he's wrong despite his expertise and authority.

And because he could still be wrong, it is a fallacy.

See my dice example above, and think about this. Is all of statistics a fallacy? All of the natural sciences? (my results are always 'probably' true, in that they're, say, in a titre, +/- 200particles/mL, 19 times out of 20)

In any case, our applied understanding of what is/is not true is very dependent on the results that other people produce, not our own work. I'm involved in HIV research (which is why I brought this example up) and what we know today may not be true tomorrow. But the closest we can get to understanding the underlying reality is by collating independent experiments that we did not personally perform. My decision to include or reject experiments depends largely on how they were published. The world is filled with cranks who post stuff on websites 'refuting' the HIV->AIDS model. I ignore them because I don't trust them. Their data isn't good enough. And I am not going to repeat their experiments to verify - it would be a waste of precious time and resources better spent elsewhere.

Even look at the way we do the JREF Paranormal Challenge, now. The JREF has drawn a line in the sand for applications that stipulates applicants need to have media coverage. This is because the JREF is applying the AfromA to the media (of all professions). They feel that the media will do a reasonable job of screening out the mentally ill. It's no guarantee, it's not a fallacy, and Randi's certainly not... what was your word again for people who reason like this... oh, yes: "incompetent."

[blutoski]

blutoski:
Your contradiction argument is absurd. We're talking about the meaning of words. The fast that drkitten was able to pull out a half dozen or so sources to back up her claim is not an appeal to authority, it is evidence of usage.

Argument to authority means a certain thing. It means something different than what you claim. That is demonstrated by citing its usage.

My argument is that popular usage is incorrect for a technical term, defined correctly elsewhere.

eg: 'microbial resistance'. As an immunologist, I know what this means. I see the expression used in the popular press incorrectly. That doesn't mean the real meaning changed. It just means I have a lot of work to do to educate the public about how to use the term correctly. Evolution defense has the same problem: 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution' are words used by Creation Science, but not by actual science (at least not normally). Yet, they are in the popular lexicon. It's too late to put those worms back into the can, but there's benefit in explaining to people that the words don't mean what their popular use implies.

So, going back to the original reason I moved into the thread, I observe that there is a disappointing proportion of skeptics who sincerely believe that any reference to an authority is automatically invalid ("a fallacy"), and should not be introduced into any argument. That it is at all times a fallacy.

While I agree that "If a recognized authority says X, then X is true," is usually wrong if it's rigidly deductive (and always wrong in scientific questions), I don't think this means we have to toss the inductive format. I further argue that this is a huge problem in skepticism, because it sends a conflicting message to the public. I also believe that people are unwilling to "let go" of this iconoclastic heroism for emotional reasons, rather than a true adherence to support of critical thinking, and that it is especially hostile to the principles of the scientific worldview.

[blutoski]

I'd also like to address the another 'big' skeptical urban myth:

* you can't prove a negative


Sorry, I just remembered a third popular skeptical urban myth:

* teaching critical thinking will make people better skeptics

So, Thomas, these are the three issues I think are worth examining, as they directly impact Skeptics' effectiveness in the real world.

[drkitten]

Actually, there's a missing premise that is false:

P3: If roses are red and violets are blue, then 6 is half of a dozen.

False premise leads to false conclusion. It's Modus Ponens, which is a legitemate argument format.

Wow.

First, no, there is no missing premise. The two premises simply don't support the conclusion (which is why it's a non sequitor fallacy).

And second, no, the conclusion isn't wrong. 6 is half of a dozen, no matter how bizarre the path of reasoning that I use to get there. That's a simple mathematical truth. The fact that I got there via a fallacy doesn't mean it's wrong -- to assert that (as you just have) is to commit explicitly the "Fallacist's Fallacy."

I could just as easily have written

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Therefore, all squares are rectangles

... and been equally fallacious, while still having a correct conclusion.




I don't see an argument there. What's the proposition?


The proposition is the statement that the Steelers would win. Which they did, despite the fact that a completely unqualified authority stated that they would. Ergo, appeal to unqualified authority does not always produce a falsehood. The biggest fool in the world can say the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out.




Nevertheless, there's no conclusion to your argument above, so I don't know whether the claim is true or not. If you used the Appeal to Authority format - and giving you the benefit of the urban legend's truth - then the conclusion would be "Therefore, 640k should be enough for anybody [for all time]."

Yes. And even when that statement was (hypothetically) made, that statement was known to be untrue. Check the systems manufactured by Seymour Cray, for example.


So, who knows if this is 'correct' in the sense that we'd have to know what was 'probably' the case.

That's a judgement that we can make, though. In hindsight, it was obviously wrong. But even in foresight, it was obviously wrong as well, and obviously made from a standpoint of self-justification instead of rational analysis. (Which, of course, is a practical and rational application of the "genetic fallacy," but I digress.



I can say that if you roll a die, you probably won't get a six. If you get a six, I wasn't 'wrong'.

Only in the sense that you've defined truth in such a probabilistic way that (you (hope that) you can never be wrong.

But such a definition won't work. First, even when we're dealing with probability theory, you might still be wrong. I don't care how good an "expert" you are on probability theory if I'm a dice cheat. The "implicit premise" that the die is fair may be violated -- there may ONLY be sixes on the die that I am rolling, in which case you are entirely wrong.

But beyond that, probabilistic truth won't hold much weight in matters of empirical science. For example, the statement "There are two living species of elephants" is not "probably true." It's outright false, to the best of modern science's knowledge and belief.

Similarly, the statement "There are two living species of elephants" was not "probably true" in 1995, either. The fact that the third species was not known does not make it non-existent. In fact, to the best of our knowledge and belief, there have been three species of elephants for several million years --- certainly since the dawn of modern biology.

So consider the following argument:

P1: Dr. I. M. Bigg-Shotte is a hypothetical but valid biological authority.
P2: Dr. Bigg-Shotte stated in his 1995 monograph that "there are only two living species of elephants."
(P3: If a person is a valid authority, then what they say is probably true)
C: therefore, it is probably true that there are only two living species of elephants.
P4: There are more than two living species of elephants, or equivalently, it is untrue that there are only two living species of elephants.
(P5: A statement that is untrue cannot be probably true.)
C' : therefore, it is not probably true that there are only two living species of elephants.

C and C' are a contradiction. Therefore, by modus tollens, at least one of the premises P1-5 are false.

P1 and P2 are an argument hypothetical, but I could find genuine examples if necessary. They're more or less unassailable.

P4 is empirically supported, in part by DNA evidence and now by anatomical and behavioral evidence as well.

P5 is a simple consequence of the common meaning of "probably true."

Ergo, P3, which is what you have been calling "Argument from Authority," is not true.

[delphi_ote]

I need more than that. You said you saw ghosts. OK: as mentioned above, I am not rejecting your claim. What was your point?

I'm wiling to answer your questions. Why have you not answered mine?
My original point is that you are being a hypocrite (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3202908#post3202908). Show us evidence these lists you're talking about exist! Otherwise, all we have to go on is your word.

[drkitten]

My argument is that popular usage is incorrect for a technical term, defined correctly elsewhere.

Yes. And I wish you would actually find the correct definition for "fallacy," for exactly that reason.

I find it interesting that you are claiming that a "critical thinking" textbook is the correct source for a philosophical term of art.

The term "fallacy" means, and has always meant, an argument structure where the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. (Probabilistic "truth" doesn't cut it, even if you had a well-founded approach to probabilistic truth.)

Under this definition, any inductive argument is fallacious. The great thinkers of the past knew it (see Hume, who wrote extensively on this. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : "There is a simple argument, due in its first form to Hume (Hume 1888, I.iii.6) that induction (not Hume's word) cannot be justified. The argument is a dilemma: Since induction is a contingent method—even good inductions may lead from truths to falsehoods—there can be no deductive justification for induction. Any inductive justification of induction would, on the other hand, be circular.")

Resorting to probabilistic truth does not salvage the situation: "Induction is contingent inference and as such can yield a conclusion only with a certain probability. The appropriate conclusion is

It is therefore probable that, a, not yet observed, is also a G.

Hume's response to this (Hume 1888, 89) is to insist that probabilistic connections, no less than simple causal connections, depend upon habits of the mind and are not to be found in our experience of the world. Weakening the inferential force between premises and conclusion may divide and complicate inductive habits, it does not eliminate them. The laws of probability alone have no more empirical content than does deductive logic." (Ibid.)

The simple fact is that non-fallacious is too high a bar for real-world arguments; an argument can be rational while still being fallacious.



So, going back to the original reason I moved into the thread, I observe that there is a disappointing proportion of skeptics who sincerely believe that any reference to an authority is automatically invalid ("a fallacy"), and should not be introduced into any argument. That it is at all times a fallacy.

That is indeed a problem, but the problem is not with the (correct) identification of argument from authority as a fallacy. The problem is that such people (and you) are committing the Fallacist's fallacy; that if an argument is fallacious, it should not be used.

The simple fact is that many "rational" arguments are formally fallacies, starting with all of induction and proceeding from there. So are many of the nevertheless important forms of the genetic fallacy, which attack directly on the credibility of the evidence and argument presented. Similarly, assuming causation when only correlation has been found is fallacious, but common and often acceptable (especially when reverse causation can be rejected -- I don' t think that cancer causes smoking.)

In fact, any causal inference is formally fallacious (Hume again). This doesn't keep people from inferring causes. What critical thinkers need to do is embrace rational argument, which can include fallacious but relatively reliable forms of argument, such as appeal to legitimate authority.

[drkitten]

Anyway, for those who are actually interested... Every argument format can lead to an incorrect conclusion, if one of the premises is false. This doesn't make every argument a fallacy.

Let's look at Modus Ponens:
P1: A->B ("if a then b")
P2: A
C: therefore, B.

Now, if A is actually false, then the conclusion is wrong. That doesn't make the argument a special fallacy.

However, some argument formats can never be true. They're called invalid argument formats. Affirming the Consequent is an example of an invalid argument format.

P1: A->B
P2: B
C: therefore, A.

It's such a common reasoning error, that it has been added to a list of logical fallacies, has a well-established "name", and everything.

I just had to point out some more confusion.

It is not the case that a false premise always leads to a false conclusion.

Consider the following:

All octogenarians are octopi
All octopi are old
Therefore, all octogenarians are old

This is a valid form of argument, known since antiquity as the Barbara syllogism. And of course all octogenarians are old -- by definition, they're at least 80. But they're not octopi, and there are young octopi.

Let's look at some Modus Ponens:

If Carrie Fisher is a goldfish, then Star Wars was a movie.
Carrie Fisher is a goldfish.
Therefore, Star Wars was a movie.

Compare:

Let's look at Modus Ponens:
P1: A->B ("if a then b")
P2: A
C: therefore, B.

Now, if A is actually false, then the conclusion is wrong.


Valid argument structure, but A is wrong. Despite this, the conclusion is correct.

Similarly, "invalid arguments" can have true conclusions as well. They can even have true premises and true conclusions.

If I have a sister, I am not an only child.
I am not an only child.
Therefore, I have a sister.

Compare:


However, some argument formats can never be true. They're called invalid argument formats. Affirming the Consequent is an example of an invalid argument format.

P1: A->B
P2: B
C: therefore, A.


As it happens, I do have a sister. So all three statements above are true, despite the "fallacy." But the same argument format could also be used to prove the existence of a brother -- which I do not have.

So the statement that "[S]ome argument formats can never be true. They're called invalid argument formats. Affirming the Consequent is an example of an invalid argument format" is not correct. There are indeed bizarre argument formats that could never be "true" (For example, A, therefore not-A), but those aren't the sort that get catalogued in fallacy lists precisely because no sensible person would use them.

Why does this matter? Because these are all terms of art with specific meanings. A microbiologist would get annoyed if I started confusing prokaryotes with eukaryotes, just as a physicist would get annoyed if I couldn't tell leptons from baryons. And more importantly, because these are exactly the sort of things that woos like to hide behind, because they know things like "fallacies are bad" without understanding exactly what a fallacy is and how they are bad.

[69dodge]

blutoski and drkitten:

Are you arguing about the definitions of words, or about something more substantive?

Do you disagree only about whether to call some argument "an argument from authority" or "a fallacy", or also about when it is reasonable to use it?

[drkitten]

blutoski and drkitten:

Are you arguing about the definitions of words, or about something more substantive?

Something more substantive; we're arguing about how to assess the truth value of a statement supported by a weak argument.

For example, consider the arguments I gave in the post two up. Blutoski has claimed that the statements "all octogenarians are old" and "I have a sister" are both demonstrably false. I claim, by contrast, that the statements are no tonly not demonstrably false, but that they are demonstrably true --- I simply haven't provided a very good demonstration.

So, yes, it's a substantial disagreement, not just over the meanings of words.

[Wowbagger]

Can we find some middle ground, and agree that the best way to assess the truth, is not even by what was said at all, but through scientific investigation, if you can pull one off?

I don't think Ph.D.s obtain their degress by arguing about arguments. They actually get real work done.

[delphi_ote]

Can we find some middle ground, and agree that the best way to assess the truth, is not even by what was said at all, but through scientific investigation, if you can pull one off?

I don't think Ph.D.s obtain their degress by arguing about arguments. They actually get real work done.
Without agreeing on basic logic, it's hard to agree on conclusions derived from scientific investigation.

[drkitten]

Without agreeing on basic logic, it's hard to agree on conclusions derived from scientific investigation.


What he said. If we can't agree on what the consequences of an observation are, there's not much use to which the observation can be put.

If hoofprints to me are evidence of horses, and to you, they're evidence of zebras, then there's not much point to looking for more prints.

[Wowbagger]

Without agreeing on basic logic, it's hard to agree on conclusions derived from scientific investigation.

What he said. If we can't agree on what the consequences of an observation are, there's not much use to which the observation can be put.

If hoofprints to me are evidence of horses, and to you, they're evidence of zebras, then there's not much point to looking for more prints.
Don't be naive. The scientific investigation would include predictions that can be tested, as part of the process.

If we see hoofprints, and two people disagree on which animal it belongs to, they can run tests to see which animal is the better match.
If the fossil is ancient enough, you can claim it might be a common ancestor, or a branch of the family that became extinct. Either way, you can make predictions, and test your hypothesis against the outcome.

Meanwhile: Two other people are arguing: What, precisely, is the difference between a zebra and a horse, anyway? Where do you draw the line between one and the other, when examining the ancestors inbetween?

I wonder which folks will get the most work, and the closest outcome of "truth" as far as can be deduced: The scientists, or the taxonomists?

[drkitten]

Don't be naive. The scientific investigation would include predictions that can be tested, as part of the process.

If we see hoofprints, and two people disagree on which animal it belongs to, they can run tests to see which animal is the better match.

That's the point. Absent an agreement in basic logic, we can't agree either on which tests to run or on how to interpret the results to settle the disagreement. If my proposed test, for example, is that the defining characteristic of a zebra are the black-and-white stripes, then if we find that the hoofprints were made by an albino zebra (which exist, and which have no stripes), then under my definition the hoofprints were not made by a zebra.

And, of course, that means that a third party would probably agree that my definition was flawed, because it did not take into account albinos. But at this point I can claim vindication (because the animal is not a striped zebra) and you can claim vindication (because the animal under DNA analysis was a mutant example of an otherwise prototypical zebra). So we both claim that we're right.... and the additional data have resolved nothing.

[delphi_ote]

Don't be naive. The scientific investigation would include predictions that can be tested, as part of the process.
If we don't agree on logic, we can't get anywhere with experiment!

For a painful demonstration of this fact, see: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=67385

[Wowbagger]

At some point, Wowbagger, you and I need to have a thread on the limits of descriptivism. Seeing as how many of the fine folks, in this thread, are coming from different schools of thought, I suspect descriptivism might still be an issue in this manner, even if they are now arguing with logic proofs. There seems to be convergence forming on what is valid and invalid logical forms. But, there are occasions where they start calling things something else, as well. Take this example:

Person A is an authority.
Person A says X is true.
Therefore X is true.

Some call that Argument from Authority. Blutoski called it a non-sequitur. But, both recognize it is a bad form. So, whatchya gonna do?

Sorry, I just remembered a third popular skeptical urban myth:

* teaching critical thinking will make people better skeptics I agree with this. It is not the teaching, but the training.

That's the point. Absent an agreement in basic logic, we can't agree either on which tests to run or on how to interpret the results to settle the disagreement. That is fine. But, I don't think Authority is the best aspect to fight over. Since when has any Authority been an ultimate source of truth, any way?

If my proposed test, for example, is that the defining characteristic of a zebra are the black-and-white stripes, then if we find that the hoofprints were made by an albino zebra (which exist, and which have no stripes), then under my definition the hoofprints were not made by a zebra. The minute someone points out your definition of Zebra is inadequate, you have to develop a more accurate definition, and re-test.

Of course, this is much of the reason why every conclusion in science is provisional. But, at least we have something reasonably reliable to work with.

If we don't agree on logic, we can't get anywhere with experiment!

For a painful demonstration of this fact, see: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=67385 Ah, memories...

It is rather amazing anything actually gets accomplished, though, isn't it?

[drkitten]

Seeing as how many of the fine folks, in this thread, are coming from different schools of thought, I suspect descriptivism might still be an issue in this manner, even if they are now arguing with logic proofs. There seems to be convergence forming on what is valid and invalid logical forms. But, there are occasions where they start calling things something else, as well. Take this example:

Person A is an authority.
Person A says X is true.
Therefore X is true.

Some call that Argument from Authority. Blutoski called it a non-sequitur. But, both recognize it is a bad form. So, whatchya gonna do?

Point out that Blutoski did, however, explicitly support the (invalid) variant

Person A is an authority
Person A says X is true
Therefore X is probably true

as a good form.


The minute someone points out your definition of Zebra is inadequate, you have to develop a more accurate definition, and re-test.

Hardly. Only if the criticism is well-founded, and I and I alone reserve the right to make that call. (That's one of Randi's bugbears -- how many times has someone failed his Challenge, only to turn around and claim that the test is somehow "invalid" and he needs to develop a more accurate definition and re-test?) Every nut-case woo with an axe to grind wants to redefine the definitions and ground rules of "science" to make sure that their pet theory passes, and part of the role of skeptics and scientists is to "keep the gates" and make sure that the only flaws that get "fixed" are the ones that were genuine flaws in the first place.

But that's part of why this is important as well. Blutoski and I disagree on what the "flaws" in an argument from authority are. Given a statement that A says that X, Blutoski has stated that the best way to evaluate the truth of X is to examine the credentials of A and to determine whether she is in fact a genuine expert.

I suggest instead we should seek independent confirmation of X's truth directly.

So this cuts directly to the heart of scientific practice.

[DRBUZZ0]

Point out that Blutoski did, however, explicitly support the (invalid) variant

Person A is an authority
Person A says X is true
Therefore X is probably true

as a good form.




I don't see why it's a problem to consider it "probably" true if it's something which is not extra-ordinary or which one would have no reason to doubt being true. If someone were to tell me something which did not appear to make sense or which there might be some reason or motive for them telling me something that is not true, I'm going to accept it without confirmation or I will at least doubt it.

But if someone who is an authority on something gives me information which appears to be valid and which is not beyond that which would be expected and is reasonable, I'm going to assume it's true. And I will do so with greater confidence from an "authority" than from someone who is not.

Example:

Me: I think the store closes at 9 pm.
John: No it closes at 10 pm.
Me: No I'm really sure it closes at 9 pm.
John: No I've been here at 10.
Me: I don't think you're correct because I remember coming here once just before 9 and I had to hurry because they were closing.
John: No it definitely said 10.
Me: Okay, if you think so, but I'm telling you it closes at 9.
Store Clerk: No, it closes at 10. It normally closes at 9, you're right, but during the holiday shopping season they extend the hours. We close on 9 on Sunday still though.


At this point despite having not accepted the explanation from the fictitious person John I would accept that I was wrong from the ficticious store clerk because they are an authority who I'd expect to know acurately. I would do so even if they don't give the explanation of the reason it's later, simply because I'd tend to think a store clerk would know the closing time with a high degree of certainty and would have little motive to lie.

[Floyt]

So, almost all research and almost all teaching is based on a deplorable fallacy? :confused:

If I actually had to go out and personally verify every fact I've gotten from books, articles, and communication with authorities during the course of my PhD research (still ongoing in case you are wondering) I would have a couple busy decades ahead of me before I could start adding even the simplest bit of new conclusions. Appeal to Authority may be a flawed practice in a world of ideal reasoning, but it is an absolutely necessary one in practical science.

I may not be grasping the basic disagreement here. DrKitten, would it be wrong to say that in your scientific career you have taken recourse to this "fallacy" thousands of times already - depending on the size of the bibliographies in your average paper? You certainly did not personally verify each and every datum taken from literature. Does the fact that you could have done so make that less of a fallacy?

ETA: as an answer to the OP, being a bit facetious: Having a PhD in any of the life sciences means that at least once you have bought whole-heartedly into copious Appeal to Authority - that, or you somehow successfully weaseled your way around the literature review part :D

[drkitten]

So, almost all research and almost all teaching is based on a deplorable fallacy? :confused:

A single fallacy? Of course not. It's also based on the fallacy of unwarranted generalization beyond the experimental sample, in many cases on the likelihood that correlation implies causation, and on unavoidable measurement errors (usually with the completely unsupported assumption that such errors are normally distributed.)

Which is why replication is so important in science. You may not go out and verify every fact you've been presented in your Ph.D. program, but I certainly hope you've verified a lot of them. If nothing else, experimental replication is an important part of the traning to be able to do your own origian work.


I may not be grasping the basic disagreement here.

The basic disagreement is in your first sentence above. What about "fallacies" are 'deplorable"? Why waste time deploring what is in fact a practical necessity?

However, the fact that something is a practical necessity does not make something "good" either. When you're sitting at the lab bench, you grab whatever evidence you can --- but the higher reliability you need, the less reliance you can place on any one piece of evidence.

DRBUZZO suggested that :

But if someone who is an authority on something gives me information which appears to be valid and which is not beyond that which would be expected and is reasonable, I'm going to assume it's true.

Would you, really? Would you be willing to bet your life on that assumption?

Have you ever gotten a second opinion from a doctor? If so, why? I mean, doctors are authorities, and usually what they say is quite reasonable. Why would you need a second doctor to confirm the diagnosis of the first?

My answer, of course, is that I'm not really wiling to make the assumption that something that important is true based on only a single person's say-so.

[DRBUZZ0]

Would you, really? Would you be willing to bet your life on that assumption?


Um... based on their word alone. I would say probably not. It would need to be at least somewhat verifiable or somehow supported by other information.


Have you ever gotten a second opinion from a doctor? If so, why? I mean, doctors are authorities, and usually what they say is quite reasonable. Why would you need a second doctor to confirm the diagnosis of the first?


I have gotten a second opinion. But if a doctor tells me I have some sort of condition and it seems to make sense I'll presume the doctor is most probably correct until I have reason to think otherwise. Sure, if there is something which I have concern about then I might seek a second opinion so that I would have greater certainty.

But if I go to the doctor with a sore throat, with all the symptoms of a strep infection and the doctor looks at it and says "yes, that looks like a classic strep infection." And then I get a call from the doctor's office a couple of hours later saying "The culture tested positive. You can come in and I'll write you a prescription for an antibiotic for that. Definately strep."

Well in that case I am going to assume that it is almost certainly strep based on the fact that that was the most logical and likely diagnosis to begin with, the doctors opinion seconded it and the test came positive. So unless the doctor is lying or has messed up the samples then I would have it. That would be something I'd consider effectively proven.


Now, would I take a doctor's opinion on a matter of life or death? Depends on the circumstance. If I was told I had cancer I'd want a second opinion and even a third. If I was told that I had an appendix that was about to blow and kill me and I needed to go into surgury asap I'd probably take the doctor's word on that one since I would not have any time to get that verified.

And I would trust the doctor more than some others. If I was being wheeled through the hospital toward surgury and someone who was there being treated for an LSD overdose and yelled "NO MAN NOT THE APPENDIX ITS THE YELLOW BIRD FROM HELL THAT'S EATING YOUR UNIVERSE FROM THE INSIDE OUT" Well.. yeah I'm going to still trust the doctor's advice a lot more. And even if the LSD addict said something that was a bit less ridiculous, the doctor still is going to get more credibility from the start. Not infinite credibility but more.

[Floyt]

The basic disagreement is in your first sentence above. What about "fallacies" are 'deplorable"? Why waste time deploring what is in fact a practical necessity?

However, the fact that something is a practical necessity does not make something "good" either. When you're sitting at the lab bench, you grab whatever evidence you can --- but the higher reliability you need, the less reliance you can place on any one piece of evidence.


Very well. But I would like to point out that a lot of the discussion here seems to revolve around the implications of the bolded part above. By conceding this state of things, you do remove any justification to dismiss an argument on the grounds of Appeal to Authority being a fallacy alone.
You can call them on citing a bad or faulty authority - i.e. as tendered above, the premise "Authority X is a reliable source of information on topic Y" may be faulty; or you might argue that in this case, for a reason X, you are not prepared to accept any authority at all. But dismissing an argument just by saying "Appeal to Authority - next" is dishonest, because everyone makes use of it, routinely, and will NOT get called on it if you "like the authority".

Whether it's a fallacy or not in terms of logic does not seem to touch this practical issue.

[drkitten]

Very well. But I would like to point out that a lot of the discussion here seems to revolve around the implications of the bolded part above. By conceding this state of things, you do remove any justification to dismiss an argument on the grounds of Appeal to Authority being a fallacy alone.

However, I can dismiss an such argument using the "best evidence" rubric. An authority is never as good as the evidence upon which the authority is based; if an authority says such-and-such, my question is "why?" If the best you've got to support your argument is a statement by an authority that you don't understand and can't otherwise support, the chances are very good that you don't understand the statement and that it doesn't really support your argument.

Given the human tendency to misinterpret and to reinterpret almost everything heard or remembered, this is a fundamental problem of any argument from authority. The situations where an authority is both genuinely authoritative and close enough to the problem at hand to be useful are rare enough that, as a practical matter, argument from authority is more or less useless in informal discussion or correspondence (such as on a forum).

The rules change somewhat when we're dealing with professional and scientific papers. For one thing, such papers have footnotes. I don't need to summarize the evidence Dr. Bigg-Shotte used to come to his conclusion, because he did it himself in (BIgg-Shotte, 2007), and the full publication information, down to the page reference, is there in the last few pages of the paper if anyone is interested in looking at the direct information. But even in such situations, overreliance on "authority" is the mark of a poor scholar, because a good scholar would provides the answers up-front as part of the discussion (which is one reason Ph.D. dissertations get so long).

There's a very simple rule for informative discourse. Always present your best evidence. And argument from authority (unlike many of the other classic fallacies upon which science is based) is almost never the best evidence you have. Hasty generalization is unavoidable -- you have the data you have, and you have to generalize from it. It might be that there are counterexamples out there somewhere (which is why it's a fallacy), but you don't know about them and can't take them into account. If your best evidence for causation is correlation, you put that forward.

But "authority" and authority alone should never be your best evidence. If you know enough about Bigg-Shotte to cite him as an authority, you should know enough about his work to know why he holds the opinion he does, which is automatically better evidence.

[Floyt]

This seems like an excellent practice, I agree with all you said. It is probably helpful to explicitly state this reasoning every so often, though, when arguing about the validity of a specific claim by authority, to flesh out your stance (which I might call my own if I had been able to formulate it this clearly. Thank you :) ).

[BPScooter]

Thanks drkitten, your last post does explain part of the evidence trail that is a mark of good science/scholarship to me. I had a pretty good (=very rigorous) doctoral committee that had some fundamental disagreements so I was able to get my thesis through by doing a very careful definition of terms section right upfront. I made it clear that when I used the word "goal," for example, I was using a cognitive sort of definition versus one based on innate needs. Psychology and social sciences are soft in that way. Are you a Bandura guy or a McClelland gal when you use that particular word, are you smuggling interpretations into your premises, etc. All good stuff but enough to stymie an earnest doctoral student into utter inertia. After a point just reading more books and hedging yourself won't work, you just state where you're coming from, pilot your measures and don't over-interpret the data. Don't get too excited about p<.05 for some random thing, note your trends, be cautious, and your committee will likely calm down. It's sort of hard to see the light at the end of that. I viewed my diss as a means to an end, most certainly, but also took humble pride in that I was able to do a pretty tight little study in an unexplored area and provide one little defensible brick in the pyramid of knowledge. Has it made me an expert on everything? What a silly idea! Has it made me capable of helping others formulate good questions, do literature reviews, design an experiment, gather good data, run some data analysis, revise their ideas, (lather rinse repeat) and write it up? Well, I suppose it did.

[ingoa]

What does having a Ph.D. really mean?

I only use it as a pick-up line. As in

"Trust me, I am a doctor!"

It only works with ladies who know that I am a physicist. They consider it funny. Especially because I am by far NOT the most trustworthy person.... :blush:

[blutoski]

Whether it's a fallacy or not in terms of logic does not seem to touch this practical issue.

I took a few days off, and came back out of curiosity. I can see the thread is still recycling the same discussion.

I'm defending the claim that philsophers have chipped away at this debate for quite some time, and that the current consensus is that yes, naturalistic epistemology depends on the result of experiments, but for all practical purposes, it's unreasonable to argue that a person can't have an opinion about something without having personally conducted the relevant experiments. The workload would grow to the point where eventually nobody could live long enough to advance knowledge beyond what is already known by those who came before.

What we do to build our personal knowledge about the world is refer to work done by others, and the method is to identify the most reliable source, if possible.

The mechanism for this is an argument format called Argument from Authority, and it has criteria:


the authority has sufficient knowledge of the subject matter
the field of study exists
the field of study's community recognize the authority as such
there is adequate agreement within the field
the authority is not excessively biased
the authority is identified


When this criteria is not met, there is a fallacy. The names for these fallacies are mostly colloquial, but my favourite two are "Appeal to Irrelevant Authority" (eg: if there is no recognized field, or the authority is not recognized in the field &c) and "Appeal to Questionable Authority" (the authority has a very suspicious vested interest).


(the main reason I revisited the thread was that Shermer's recent e.Skeptic (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/#feature) addresses another Skeptical Urban Myth that I itemized earlier in the thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3202469#post3202469).)

I actually have a more organized list of popular Skeptical Urban Myths now:

critical thinking is skeptical thinking
you can't prove a negative
appeal to authority is a fallacy
absence of evidence is evidence of absence


I don't want to further aggravate this thread, though. What I'll do is take some time to put my thoughts into a plainer format for the next Rational Enquirer.

[drkitten]

The mechanism for this is an argument format called Argument from Authority, and it has criteria:


the authority has sufficient knowledge of the subject matter
the field of study exists
the field of study's community recognize the authority as such
there is adequate agreement within the field
the authority is not excessively biased
the authority is identified


When this criteria is not met, there is a fallacy.

This is vacuously true.

When these criteria (criteria is plural, the singular is criterion) are met, there is still a fallacy.

You've made this statement several times. Each time, it has been wrong. It will not become right if you state it again, nor will it become right if you attempt to publish it in another forum.

[blutoski]

You've made this statement several times. Each time, it has been wrong. It will not become right if you state it again, nor will it become right if you attempt to publish it in another forum.

I'm not writing for your sake. Just trying to lend assistance to those you've thoroughly confused.

You were trying to explain to Floyt that science is not based on a fallacy - no, you clarified by saying it's based on lots of fallacies.

You call the scientific method a set of fallacies; I call them induction.

Your citations were wikis and anonymously authored websites (many of which contradicted your claim) and mine was a current textbook for introduction to critical thinking.

I'll let the readers decide.

[drkitten]

You were trying to explain to Floyt that science is not based on a fallacy - no, you clarified by saying it's based on lots of fallacies.

And I stand by my statement. The simple observation that sometimes scientists get stuff wrong should suffice to show that science is, in fact, fallacious.


You call the scientific method a set of fallacies; I call them induction.

Yes. And since you've not explained how, for example, a scientist can non-fallaciously generalize beyond the available data, I'm comfortable with it.


Your citations were wikis and anonymously authored websites (many of which contradicted your claim) and mine was a current textbook for introduction to critical thinking.

A current and non-web-accessible textbook. Not especially helpful for those who want to confirm that you're not misrepresenting it.

Again, I stand by my writing, my citations, and my interpretation of them.


I'll let the readers decide.

As far as I can tell, the readership has decided, which is why I cautioned you against attempted republication.

[GreNME]

I'll not get into the argument above, I simply want to point out that Cobain was barely mediocre at best with his music (pop iconography aside), and at worst he was sub-par. I mean, holy hell, I managed to learn to play the guitar for the entire Nevermind album in the time it takes to play the songs, just by ear, and I have nowhere near perfect pitch. There is a heavy disconnect between popularity and actual expertise-- there are actually guitarists who have boatloads of performance talent but not a lot of "foundational" skill, and there are others who are studied to the point of virtuosity who can perform impressive feats but hold very little overall popular appeal.

By the way, drkitten:Bill Gates said that 1 MB of memory should be enough for anyone.
Bill Gates was a recognized authority
... but was still wrong.

No he wasn't, because he never said that. It's an urban legend and a misquote (he also never said the "256k" one either). :)

Okay, carry on.

[Olowkow]

To me, a PhD teaches one how to learn, listen, discuss and disagree without offending. Oh yes, it taught me how to say "I don't know!"

[Jeff Corey]

I'm not writing for your sake. Just trying to lend assistance to those you've thoroughly confused.

You were trying to explain to Floyt that science is not based on a fallacy - no, you clarified by saying it's based on lots of fallacies.

You call the scientific method a set of fallacies; I call them induction.

Your citations were wikis and anonymously authored websites (many of which contradicted your claim) and mine was a current textbook for introduction to critical thinking.

I'll let the readers decide.
Karl Popper(1934/1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery page 29. "My own view is that the various difficulties of inductive logic here sketched are insurmountable." And deduction can only falsify statements, never "prove" them. I think that's what Dr K was talking about.

[ChaoticLimbs]

Of what use is a PhD? Plenty!

When I see two people arguing over a topic, and one of them is a high school graduate with a lab in his garage which appears to violate the natural laws, and the other is a PhD research chemist, then if the argument is about chemistry, the PhD helps me know who's correct and who's an ass.

[ChaoticLimbs]

To me, a PhD teaches one how to learn, listen, discuss and disagree without offending. Oh yes, it taught me how to say "I don't know!"


That sums it up nicely. PhD holders tend to know how to say that phrase without feeling stupid for not knowing EVERYTHING.

High school graduates who violate the laws of thermodynamics? Not so much.

My question would be "How come whenever someone comes forward to claim some absolutely fantastic new discovery which they are not ready to demonstrate to scientists, it always seems to be a person who is 'self taught' and not someone with a BS or MS in the relevant field?"

[blutoski]

And I stand by my statement. The simple observation that sometimes scientists get stuff wrong should suffice to show that science is, in fact, fallacious.

This leads me to a question, then: is there a risk from the general advice skeptics bring to the public is that they should not use fallacies? ie: are we telling them we want them to stop using science because - like ad hominem attacks - it's a logical fallacy?

Are we being inconsistent, asking the public to embrace fallacies that produce results we want to be true (scientific facts) but reject fallacies that produce results we don't like (supernatural facts).

How do you explain this to people who want to learn how to apply critical thinking to claims?

Please don't misinterpret this as an argument from consequence. I'm not saying: "we shouldn't call induction a fallacy because it would lead to problems," - I actually want to know how you manage what must be a common line of questioning. Especially from Creationists! (uniformitarianism is a perfectly good example of induction as applied to geology and evolutionary sciences - if it's a fallacy, how can we ask them to stop using fallacies in their pro-creation arguments?)





Yes. And since you've not explained how, for example, a scientist can non-fallaciously generalize beyond the available data, I'm comfortable with it.

While Hume is famous for his 19th century critique of induction, I think it's inappropriate to go so far as call it a fallacy in this day and age.

Another poster brought up Popper, but Popper's work on de-inductionizing (to invent a word, sorry) science is weak. He tried to prove that science was deduction - not induction - and therefore there was no reason to consider induction valid (since science appears to work, it was an argument that induction was a valid argument family, and this was a challenge to those who claimed that induction was unacceptable in any argument). That science is exclusively deduction is no longer considered a defensible position. Especially in this post-Kuhn era.

(Aside: I'm particularly mindful that some participants are quoting famous philosophers to bolster the argument that such activity should be avoided.)

However, as weak as Wikipedia is on complex issues such as this, it does have three relevant entries:


Inductive Reasoning: Argument from Authority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning#Argument_from_authority) - note: the author of this section regards AofA as an inductive argument format. This partially conflicts with the independent entry on AofA, which was my point: Wikipedia is a bit scattered and inconsistent in its treatment of this subject. An artefact of distributed, nonvetted authoring.
Problem of Induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction)
List of Logical Fallacies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logical_fallacies) - please note that things like 'induction' or 'science' are absent. Granted, it is an incomplete list.






A current and non-web-accessible textbook. Not especially helpful for those who want to confirm that you're not misrepresenting it.

Well, that's a different problem. But curiously not unrelated to the fact most of the links you provided were recycling material they read in books, and they provided citations. Unless you have these books in your library and have confirmed that their interpretations are correct, my statements are at the same level of acceptability as theirs.





As far as I can tell, the readership has decided, which is why I cautioned you against attempted republication.

You're a mindreader now? I personally have no idea what the readership of this thread thinks. I don't even know who the audience is, much less what they've decided, collectively or individually.

[Jeff Corey]

...Another poster brought up Popper, but Popper's work on de-inductionizing (to invent a word, sorry) science is weak. He tried to prove that science was deduction - not induction - and therefore there was no reason to consider induction valid (since science appears to work, it was an argument that induction was a valid argument family, and this was a challenge to those who claimed that induction was unacceptable in any argument). That science is exclusively deduction is no longer considered a defensible position. Especially in this post-Kuhn era...
Popper's work on induction was weak? And if he ever said that science was "exclusively deductive"? I never read that and I previously referenced a book right next to me, which you seem to have missed.
Short Popper.
Induction is flawed because we may have missed the plaid crow, deduction may only provide disproof {modus tollens} but never provides the proof of a conjecture {modus ponens}
Post Kuhnian crap does not impress me.

[Jeff Corey]

...Another poster brought up Popper, but Popper's work on de-inductionizing (to invent a word, sorry) science is weak. He tried to prove that science was deduction - not induction - and therefore there was no reason to consider induction valid (since science appears to work, it was an argument that induction was a valid argument family, and this was a challenge to those who claimed that induction was unacceptable in any argument). That science is exclusively deduction is no longer considered a defensible position. Especially in this post-Kuhn era...
Popper's work on induction was weak? And if he ever said that science was "exclusively deductive"? I never read that and I previously referenced a book right next to me, which you seem to have missed.
Short Popper.
Induction is flawed because we may have missed the plaid crow, deduction may only provide disproof {modus tollens} but never provides the proof of a conjecture {modus ponens}
Post Kuhnian crap does not impress me.

[blutoski]

Popper's work on induction was weak? And if he ever said that science was "exclusively deductive"? I never read that and I previously referenced a book right next to me, which you seem to have missed.
Short Popper.
Induction is flawed because we may have missed the plaid crow, deduction may only provide disproof {modus tollens} but never provides the proof of a conjecture {modus ponens}
Post Kuhnian crap does not impress me.

I'm a big Popper fan and also a Vienna Circle and Logical Positivists fanboy. But that doesn't mean that his critics can be dismissed, especially when they have a good point or two. And it's not just "post" Kuhn that criticized Popper's deductive model - this exact dispute was probably Kuhn's claim to fame. Popper did not support the concepts of 'normal science' or 'paradigm shifts.'

Popper's version of the scientific method was a sort of binding of methodology and epistemology. Specifically, he called it the "hypothetico-deductive" model. Emphasis on the deductive. Another common term for it is conjecture-refutation.

What's frustrating about this thread a bit is that it is recycling an old debate that I feel was moved forward with Kuhn in the 1950s, which puts this discussion about two generations behind the times. Paradoxically, Kuhn's progressive model was regarded as conservative, whereas Popper's conservative model was regarded as progressive. These were political misinterpretations of philosophical models, and I see the same conflagration here.

[BPScooter]

Can I get a PhD from the University of JREF? No? Why not!!! WAAAH

OK, I've personally calmed down, and feel prepared to engage my ideas with opposing ideas.

Now can I get a PhD? Oh, I guess there's more to it.

What does getting a PhD really mean?

[Wowbagger]

What does getting a PhD really mean? That's a good question! Somebody ought to start a thread about that... :rolleyes:

[Complexity]

To me, a PhD teaches one how to learn, listen, discuss and disagree without offending. Oh yes, it taught me how to say "I don't know!"


Sorry to burst your bubble, but most Ph.D.'s that I know are lousy at each of the things you listed.

[fls]

To me, a PhD teaches one how to learn, listen, discuss and disagree without offending. Oh yes, it taught me how to say "I don't know!"


Sorry to burst your bubble, but most Ph.D.'s that I know are lousy at each of the things you listed.

Well, most people are lousy at each of the things you listed.

We need a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial.

Linda

[iamivy]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession.

[bokonon]

Im reminded of my Linear Systems professor and the story of after he got his PHD and started working at the college I currently attend. There was a research project for the government involving blocking out lasers that are used to blind a soilder's eyes. He was asked to work on this project. His immediate response was to tell the person that it violated the laws of physics namely the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between laser light and regular light.

Well, that's what they get for asking a linear guy to work on a nonlinear optics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics) problem!
It's always easier to say "It can't be done" than to admit "I can't do it."

From 2004: Protecting soldiers from blinding lasers (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2711_133/ai_n6150058)

Working with chemists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, UCF scientists already have the technology to make objects darken quickly enough to prevent blindness from a laser beam, maintains Eric Van Stryland, dean of the College of Optics and Photonics. The next step is to incorporate that technology into an object small enough to be worn comfortably by soldiers and pilots.

[Jeff Corey]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession.
You are mistaken, at least in my experience. We don't call ourselves "Doctors", let alone "Medical doctors". At university or laboratory or other place of employment, where the title may be appropriate, "Doctor" might be common. Outside in everyday interactions, no, mostly. A few times I have run across school principals who insisted on being called "Doctor Johnson" because they had an E.ED.
And since the Ph. D. was an honored degree when "Medical doctors" were mostly employing leeches and poisons and mastering the curative powers of razor sharp lancets on people's arteries and veins, we do have some historical precedent.
So I call your post phony. They don't do it. And learn to spell "phony". There will be a test on Monday.

[Iamme]

.
How do you know if a carpenter is any good?

If he builds houses upside down, then he's no good. Or, if someone says, "Oh NO...not HIM!"...he probably ain't no good either. (Quotes credited to Mr. Ecman)

Knowledge and actual skill level can be 2 different things, also, unfortunately, which complicates matters. You can have the guy telling you about cheek-cuts, lookouts, cope-cuts, bird's mouth cuts, reveals,...his laser guided tools... and on and on til infinitum...but this may only mean he is book smart on terms and has no practical experience. The guy could be a klutz. And maybe can't think outside the box, also.

So you need references from other people, and also to see some of his prior work. But even with seeing his prior work, you may not know, unless hearing from the person who contracted him, because that person might tell you he had to redo everything 3 times til he got it right.

[iamivy]

So I call your post phony. Call my post what you want. I still will call the PhDs phonys. there are several of them pretending to be doctors and using their title inappropriately. And learn to spell "phony". There will be a test on Monday.I will make sure I fail. I have always craved for my teacher's attention :p

[Wowbagger]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession. I suspect you are using a very narrow, very limited definition of "doctor".

Did you know there are, in fact, other kinds of doctors, besides medical doctors?!!!!!!!!!! Whoa!!!!

[Jeff Corey]

Call my post what you want. I still will call the PhDs phonys. there are several of them pretending to be doctors and using their title inappropriately. I will make sure I fail. I have always craved for my teacher's attention :p
"Several of them"? Out of how many? I already told about a couple of E.Ed.s that did that. That doesn't establish a general trend. A couple of biologists that say that evolution is wrong doesn't make them all stupid.
And good job on spelling "phony" correctly! I'll make sure there are two gold stars on your Student Progress Chart Monday morning. Remember, you can trade in your gold stars for goodies at the end of the week.

[Jeff Corey]

If he builds houses upside down, then he's no good. Or, if someone says, "Oh NO...not HIM!"...he probably ain't no good either. (Quotes credited to Mr. Ecman)

Knowledge and actual skill level can be 2 different things, also, unfortunately, which complicates matters. You can have the guy telling you about cheek-cuts, lookouts, cope-cuts, bird's mouth cuts, reveals,...his laser guided tools... and on and on til infinitum...but this may only mean he is book smart on terms and has no practical experience. The guy could be a klutz. And maybe can't think outside the box, also.

So you need references from other people, and also to see some of his prior work. But even with seeing his prior work, you may not know, unless hearing from the person who contracted him, because that person might tell you he had to redo everything 3 times til he got it right.
We were just watching "Property Ladder" about people fixing up houses to sell. These people sometimes have no idea. "Let's cover all the brick with stucco 'cause wimmen like stucco". Dumb idea.

[fls]

Call my post what you want. I still will call the PhDs phonys. there are several of them pretending to be doctors and using their title inappropriately.

I think perhaps what is being referred to here are the sCAM artists who pretend their degree is their profession?

Linda

[Complexity]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession.


I was going to ignore you this morning but forgot.

Corrected.

[BPScooter]

PhDs are people that have earned a terminal degree, entitled "doctor of philosophy" from a major university. Their terminal work, entitled a "dissertation" is available on ProQuest or any other academic search engine, by using their real name. If you would like to discuss my research, please PM me, and I will be happy to talk about all the people I referred to, and those that have referred to me. Most if not all of them are also PhDs.

As to the general disregard or misunderstanding of a PhD. Go get one yourself, and see if your armchair confidence lasts that long. Bluntly put, PhDs have proven themselves in a rigorous and highly focused intellectual test.

[bigred]

Having known people who got PhDs, I'd say the only thing it absolutely means for sure is that someone busted some serious butt and was able to get along well enough with whoever their "mentors" (or however you describe the people "over" them) were to get through it. I do not say that to imply it is not an impressive achievement, only that it does not guarantee greater knowledge or certainly wisdom in their field (although more knowledge at least is obviously likely).

[Wowbagger]

Bluntly put, PhDs have proven themselves in a rigorous and highly focused intellectual test. I do not doubt it. Though, not all PhDs are capable of being that rigorous or focused, throughout their career. Ove time, some get lazy, and some get crazy.

Having known people who got PhDs, I'd say the only thing it absolutely means for sure is that someone busted some serious butt and was able to get along well enough with whoever their "mentors" (or however you describe the people "over" them) were to get through it.Although, it might be worth mentioning that some "PhDs" are obtained from diploma mills: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Bible_University

(I put "PhDs" in quotes, because I do recognize that they are not legit, by accredited academic standards.)

[Jeff Corey]

Some animals are more equal than others.

Miss Piggy

[bigred]

Although, it might be worth mentioning that some "PhDs" are obtained from diploma mills: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Bible_UniversityWell yeah, I meant real PhDs.

[sackett]

Coincidentally, I saw my ophthalmologist yesterday, and he mentioned that he's going for his PhD in bioengineering. His MD and his many publications are well and good, but if you want to be accepted as an academic researcher, you need that Post-Hole Digger after your name. So for a while he'll be simultaneously an eminent professor of medicine and a lowly graduate student -- in the same institution.

[Jeff Corey]

Three times I've worked for or with psych Ph. D.s who went on to med school and received an M.D. (2 cases) and a D.O.

[Steve]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession.

Anecdote: In high school (maaany years ago) my best friend's father held a PhD in geology. His wife always referred to him, in my presence, as "Dr. White". Presumably she enjoyed the perceived status of being married to a "doctor". The only name I ever heard "Dr. White" use to identify himself was Bill.

[Crundy]

The letters after your name seem to be the academic Pokemon for some people. At Kings College London where I attended there was a religious course you could do in addition to your degree which gave you the letters 'AKC' (Associate of King's College I think). Literally the only selling point was the extra letters.

Amusingly you can add Microsoft certification letters after your name, so I could sign my name with "BSc, MCP, MCAD, MCSD, MCTS". I'll have to do the upgrade exams so I can have MCPD as well :) Imagine all the attention I'll get from fly bitches!

[ddt]

Why do they pretend to be Medical doctors? I call PhDs phoney doctors if they do not belong to the medical profession.
As others already explained: it's the other way around. Physicians somehow wound up with being called by a general title which most of them even don't have.

Whether people with a Ph.D. get called "doctor" in everyday life depends very much on the culture. In Holland, you'd be considered very arrogant for insisting on it. In Germany, though, it's still much of a status symbol and common to be addressed as such - even to the point that a (male) doctor's wife is addressed as "Frau Doktor".

As the same word confusion exists in Germany, many physicians do indeed earn their Ph.D., so they are indeed a "Dr.med.". I've been told that the requirements for a medical Ph.D. are very light over there. :)

[Hellkat9940]

According to my introductory psych professor a PhD means "Piled Higher and Deeper" and then proceeded to show a video with all sorts of woo-filled psych claims. Like one headshrinker that was convincing her patients that current traumas stemmed from the fact that their egg got stuck in the fallopian tube for a bit.

[Almo]

For me, a PhD means you jumped through whatever hoops were needed.

I have a master's in Physics, because the qualifying exam was too difficult two years running, and the department passed only the outliers.

About 9 students took it each of these years. Their scores made a bell curve centered on about 33 points out of an available 120. Each year, there were two uncreative types who scored about 100. They passed only those two and flunked everyone else.

They realized the mistake, and offered to let me take it a third time. But I wasn't going to subject myself to another 3-day 15-hour physics test with no available references. It was a completely impractical means of deeming who was worthy of a PhD or not. My research was solid, and my general understanding of physics was pretty good (better in some fields than others). But could I grind out problems with no reference books? No.

There were people in that department who had passed the test, but it still took them a total of 10 years to finish the program since they had a lot of trouble with their research. I realize it's not necessary that it's always a person's fault their research goes badly. But it was a very common problem there.

I program video games now. Do I wish I had the PhD and were a physics professor? To an extent, yes. But I like where I am, so in retrospect, it's worked out.

[Vitnir]

So far I have discovered that my PhD means I have painted myself into a very small corner and have a hard time finding jobs where a PhD is required or even a plus. As an experiment I will deny having a PhD and just say I worked during those years and see if that makes any difference when my current project is terminated.
Since I took my degree at a university hospital I got the degree "doctor of medicine", not to be confused with medical doctors.

[Crundy]

So far I have discovered that my PhD means I have painted myself into a very small corner and have a hard time finding jobs where a PhD is required or even a plus
Same thing with being a member of Mensa. It's generally accepted that you should leave that off your CV, as you're more likely to get a job without mentioning it.

[Jeff Corey]

I wonder why?

[chris epic]

Although, I do find it mildly ironic that Ph.D. stands for "Doctor of Philosophy", which does not seem to be an accurate description of its usage, today, from what I can tell.

Doctor: "to show, teach, correct"
Philosophy: "the love of wisdom, knowledge"

Seems relatively accurate....

[BPScooter]

I've chilled out a little--to just touch on a couple things brought up here. Yes, "Dr. Snerd" is a personal aggrandizement (insisting that the title be used at all times) for some folks. And all Dr.'s aren't the same. I think there is a little snooty pecking order, between PhD, MD, EdD, DMA, JD, and whatever else is out there. PhD as in "philosophy" goes back to the term "natural philosophy" as well as plain old philosophy, so the first real anatomists, etc, were PhD I would imagine. As opposed to the Dr. of theology way back when. Medicine, law, education, music all created their "Dr" on that model so their fields could join the established ivory tower as it was at the time. So, yeah, there's a lot of social psychology to be considered.

In general, at work, I have colleagues and students address me as Dr., and make sure I use Mr. or Professor with colleagues w/o Doctorate. It's proper, it's accurate, and helps students understand that there are such things out there and maybe they'll be interested in finding out how to get one. If I know a master's degree student aspires to a doctorate (PhD in my field) I really change my approach to them, encouraging always but pulling a few less punches when it comes to the coherence and quality of their thinking and writing.

[Piggy]

In the field of English language, it's a professional degree for university professorships, that's all.

It means that other credentialed people in the field have certified that you've read enough and understood enough of the subject to teach it, that you're capable of doing research (such as it is) in the field and writing up your... I can't call them "results", but anyway, writing up your conclusions in the proper format, and that you've got the stomach to put up with the insanity that is an English department for several years without bailing.

[Piggy]

I should qualify my last post.

There are people doing real research in the field of English language. They are in linguistics, cognitive-based reading theory, and related disciplines.

Sadly, though, they're by far the minority, and most of the rest are in literature, and far too many of them are not even interested in doing any sort of hard study about literature, but are simply using the English department to practice sociology without having to actually study sociology.

[Madalch]

When I did my post-doctoral fellowship in the remote eastern parts of Germany, I was required to re-apply for my position half-way through, and I had to show them my degree (freshly faxed from home) to prove I was qualified. The fellow took one look at the certifiate saying "Doctor of Philosophy" and said, "This says he's a philosopher- the job's for a chemist!" I was almost fired on the spot by an ignorant administrator.

[Wowbagger]

Doctor: "to show, teach, correct"
Philosophy: "the love of wisdom, knowledge"

Seems relatively accurate.... Yeah, but today, it applies more to science, and not so much the broader realm of philosophy.

[Piggy]

Yeah, but today, it applies more to science, and not so much the broader realm of philosophy.

Uh... they still give PhD's in other fields, y'know.

[phrenicgermal]

I have a doctorate in divinity from the Universal Life Church. These are the same ones that will ordain anybody free. I believe that I remember it being accredited. All it means is that it's technically not fraud to put Dr. on my passport, publish a book with the title 'Dr.' and so on. I don't but . . . I could.

[Wowbagger]

Uh... they still give PhD's in other fields, y'know.Yeah, but still.... the word "philosophy" has got that olde fashioned flare, y'know?

They should come up with a newer, hipper meaning for "Ph.D."

How about Doctor of Phat!! Yeah!!!!!

[Piggy]

Yeah, but still.... the word "philosophy" has got that olde fashioned flare, y'know?

They should come up with a newer, hipper meaning for "Ph.D."

How about Doctor of Phat!! Yeah!!!!!

Sadly, I think the philosophy moniker is still most apt for most PhDs in English these days. :(

Oh, well.

How about Pre-heated Donuts? It just makes me feel better.

[Complexity]

Pissing for Height and Distance

[Wowbagger]

Pissing for Height and Distance Dude, that joke was, like, so 5 pages ago!

[drkitten]

I have a doctorate in divinity from the Universal Life Church. These are the same ones that will ordain anybody free. I believe that I remember it being accredited. All it means is that it's technically not fraud to put Dr. on my passport, publish a book with the title 'Dr.' and so on. I don't but . . . I could.

I rather seriously doubt that the ULC has an accredited D.Div. program. Or, rather, I doubt that it has a program accredited by any recognized accrediting agency ("accreditation" under US law is rather complex and rather silly).

That doesn't mean that it's fraud to use the degree, but it's certainly in bad taste among holders of "real" degrees. Heck, it wouldn't be fraud to put Dr on your passport or to publish a book using the title Dr even if you had no degrees at all....

[Jeff Corey]

The ULC awards honorary doctorates. No course work is required. But why bother when you can buy one for a "support honorarium" of only $2,000 from the University of Berkley, here http://www.berkley-u.edu/

[Jeff Corey]

The ULC awards honorary doctorates. No course work is required. But why bother when you can buy one for a "support honorarium" of only $2,000 from the University of Berkley, here http://www.berkley-u.edu/

Note: Not UC Berkeley.

[wilsontown]

Indeed, 'Dr' isn't a protected title at all, at least in the UK.

[drkitten]

Indeed, 'Dr' isn't a protected title at all, at least in the UK.

Nor in most of the States. Indeed, I'm not sure the concept of "protected title" exists in most of the States. What does sometimes exist is a degree requirement as part of a licensure requirement (for example, to practice as an engineer in Texas requires that one be licenced as a "Professional Engineer," which requires a particular degree and sitting an exam). But merely printing something on a passport or a business card isn't "practicing" a profession. In the States, I could call myself the Count of Monte Cristo, Professor of Alternative Medicine at Stanford, and a StartFleet Admiral on my business cards with no legal consequences whatsoever.

[delphi_ote]

In the States, I could call myself the Count of Monte Cristo, Professor of Alternative Medicine at Stanford, and a StartFleet Admiral on my business cards with no legal consequences whatsoever.
Genius! My new business cards are going to be awesome...

[Redisca]

What does sometimes exist is a degree requirement as part of a licensure requirement (for example, to practice as an engineer in Texas requires that one be licenced as a "Professional Engineer," which requires a particular degree and sitting an exam). But merely printing something on a passport or a business card isn't "practicing" a profession. In the States, I could call myself the Count of Monte Cristo, Professor of Alternative Medicine at Stanford, and a StartFleet Admiral on my business cards with no legal consequences whatsoever.

Yeech, not so fast. True, there is no such thing as a protected title, and printing up a bunch of business cards is not tantamount to "practicing a profession" -- it's just a valid exercise of one's First Amendment right. HOWEVER (and this is a big "however"), the First Amendment is not a defense to allegations of fraud, and when a fake title is used to mislead consumers, you can run into all kinds of legal trouble, both of the criminal variety (practicing a licensed profession without a license, larceny, etc.) and civil (where the BS business cards can be used as evidence of fraud.

[drkitten]

Genius! My new business cards are going to be awesome...

For a while, my official title at the company I ran was "President, CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, GAM", where the final letters stood for "God All-Mighty."

And, no, that wasn't my suggestion. That was actually the suggestion of my junior partner.

I think I still have a few of those cards lying around....

[Gate2501]

Having a PhD equates largely to one thing...

Tenacity.

[Piggy]

Having a PhD equates largely to one thing...

Tenacity.

And hip waders. Don't forget the hip waders.

I think a big part of the PhD process is showing that you really can put up with the academic environment for years on end.

[Complexity]

Gate and Piggy - I think you're both quite right.

I was planning on teaching in college for a career, and did so for five years after graduation, but finally couldn't take the that-which-causes-the-need-for-hip-waders any longer.

Knowing what I know now, I don't think I'd do the Ph.D. again. It certainly hasn't helped me professionally. Nearly all of what I learned I invented, and all that that required was self-confidence, curiosity, and time.

Nope, wouldn't earn a Ph.D. or M.S. again.

My research hasn't benefited from the graduate degrees or the time spent earning them.

So it goes.

[Lilith]

Having a PhD equates largely to one thing...

Tenacity.

I was going to say this! Or something like it. When people express awe at my PhD, and ask how I did it, I usually reply "perseverance".

Do a google images search on "grad school groening" - one of my favorites. (I can't post links yet)

And please don't miss the first result on a google search of "doctoral disorder of adulthood" - see the astate result, if your search results come out differently from mine. It's a must read.